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| Open-ended question 1: Did you have any doubts about the visitor restrictions, and if so, how were you able to clarify your doubts? |
| Category | Illustrative analytic points |
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| Identifying particularly critical situations | (i) Doubts occurred in particularly critical situations related to the care of, for example, dying patients, patients suffering from cognitive deficits, the critically ill, parents of a child or adolescent patient, or young siblings. Also, when staff had to discuss critical treatment issues with a patient, the charge nurses would have preferred relatives to be present. |
| (ii) During the pandemic, increased knowledge of the disease and the availability of more protective equipment allowed charge nurses to safely deviate from the restrictions in certain patients’ cases |
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| Clarifying doubts through communication | (i) The charge nurses discussed uncertainties with their heads of department, fellow managers, ward staff, patients and relatives, the hospital hygiene team, or the hospital’s corona hotline |
| (ii) Clarifying doubts was time consuming |
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| Leadership and collaboration | (i) Sometimes the restrictions were managed with variations, causing confusion and frustration among patients, relatives, and staff, such as when a patient was transferred from one ward, department, or hospital to another. This was a challenge to the relationships between staff and patients or relatives and to the collaborations among units, departments, and/or hospitals. |
| (ii) The charge nurses found some nurses fully capable of making decisions about deviating from the general restrictions, and they seemed comfortable doing so. Other charge nurses experienced that the nurses wanted the charge nurse to make the decision about visiting in each patient’s case, to feel protected by her authority. |
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