Evidence-informed consensus statements to guide COVID-19 patient visitation policies: results from a national stakeholder meeting.

Purpose: Hospital policies forbidding or limiting families from visiting relatives on the intensive care unit (ICU) has affected patients, families, healthcare professionals, and patient- and family-centered care (PFCC). We sought to refine evidence-informed consensus statements to guide the creation of ICU visitation policies during the current COVID-19 pandemic and future pandemics and to identify barriers and facilitators to their implementation and sustained uptake in Canadian ICUs.

Methods: We created consensus statements from 36 evidence-informed experiences (i.