‘A Forever Imprint on Me…I Couldn't Be There When He Needed Me the Most’: Care Partner Experiences of Patient Safety During Covid‐19 Restrictions
Bibliographic record
Abstract
BACKGROUND: It is believed that engaging care partners (CPs) in patient safety is a potential strategy to ensure patients' well-being during hospital admissions. When present, CPs who feel comfortable can be 'safety nets', monitoring and acting to prevent healthcare-related harm. However, there are limitations in evidence about CPs' perspectives regarding and experiences of safety engagement at the direct care level and the implications if they have restricted access, such as during the Covid-19 pandemic. OBJECTIVE: To understand CPs' experiences of patient safety when, due to Covid-19 restrictions, they were unable to be present in the hospital during a patient admission. METHODS: A descriptive, exploratory qualitative study was conducted in an acute care hospital in Ontario, Canada, and four Canadian organisations that support CPs. One-to-one semi-structured interviews and reflexive thematic analysis were completed. FINDINGS: Twelve CPs participated. Overall, they believed hospital restrictions had consequences on patient safety and was troubling for them and their loved ones, as illuminated in the three main themes: Stress Escalates Amid Disrupted, Ineffective Communications Between CPs and Patients/Healthcare Professionals; CPs' Patient Safety Concerns Change and are Heightened in Their Absence From the Bedside, Calling for New Tactics, and Hospital Access Restriction Negatively Impacts CPs' Well-Being, Necessitating Creative Ways to Bolster Their Strength. DISCUSSION: The findings give insight into CPs' engagement in patient safety at the direct care level and the importance of being present, given the types of contributions they want to make. Communication was paramount, and the scope of their involvement-the nuances of which became more apparent in their absence-affirmed how connected CPs are and need to be within the health team for successful risk reduction. Disconnecting CPs from engaging in safety diminished the patient's protection, and instead of reducing CP fears related to involvement, it escalated newfound worries and stressors. CONCLUSION: This study highlights CPs' experiences with patient safety when they cannot be at the bedside and their crucial role in mitigating risks, and, in anticipation of future public health crises, as well as ongoing care approaches, questions the risk in prohibiting and not fostering CPs' involvement at the bedside. PATIENT OR PUBLIC CONTRIBUTION: Twelve CPs of adult patients with lived experiences of engaging in patient safety participated in this study. These CPs were unable to be present with the patient during their admission due to visitor restrictions implemented as a result of Covid-19.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.008 | 0.021 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.002 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.020 | 0.016 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.008 | 0.007 |
| Open science | 0.002 | 0.011 |
| Research integrity | 0.003 | 0.007 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.006 | 0.001 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".