‘My Biggest Fear Is She’ll Die Alone’: Care Partner Perspectives of InstitutionalCOVID-19 Visitor Restrictions in Ontario, Canada

In “‘My Biggest Fear Is She’ll Die Alone’: Care Partner Perspectives of Institutional COVID-19 Visitor Restrictions in Ontario, Canada,” Reid et al. (2023) report on interviews conducted with 14 care partners in April and May 2021. The study examines how pandemic visitation policies in long-term care institutions varied widely due to shifting public health guidelines, forcing families to make difficult decisions about who could visit. While some interviewees acknowledged that visitor restrictions helped reduce viral transmission, many noted that isolation and reduced care contributed to declines in their loved ones’ health. Alternative communication methods such as window visits and video calls were often insufficient, especially for residents with cognitive disabilities. Care partners described quarantine protocols as traumatic and raised concerns about the pandemic’s exposure of elderly marginalization. They recommended more flexible visitation policies tailored to individual needs and education for care partners to support safe interactions. These findings reveal the challenges of elder care under pandemic restrictions and the necessity of nuanced policy development.

The narratives reveal the emotional trauma caused by quarantine measures and expose the broader vulnerabilities and marginalization of elderly populations during the pandemic. Through detailed accounts, care partners convey how institutional policies translated into personal experiences of fear, loss, and resilience. These stories clarify the complex realities behind visitor restrictions and emphasize the need for policies responsive to individual circumstances. By foregrounding these lived experiences, the research highlights the critical role of subjective, relational perspectives in understanding COVID-19’s impact on elder care.