Labor and Delivery Visitor Policies During the COVID-19 Pandemic: Balancing Risks and Benefits
Kawal Arora, Jaclyn T. Mauch, Kate Gibson
Abstract
( JAMA . 2020;323:2468–2469) During a global pandemic, the responsibility of a physician shifts to prioritizing community health rather than maximizing the best interests of individual patients. As such, policies limiting patient visitors have been implemented in virtually all clinical settings in order to curb infectious exposures. Many labor and delivery units have instituted a policy limiting patients to one prescreened and afebrile adult visitor. At the beginning of the pandemic, many hospitals in the New York City Area were more stringent and many prohibited all visitors to delivery and postpartum units. However, the New York Department of Health issued guidelines and the governor of New York issued an executive order that reaffirmed the right of pregnant women to have an accompanying support person present during labor, delivery, and the immediate postpartum period.