ArticlePalliative care and social practice2026
The COVID-19 experience and the necropolitical space of end-of-life care in residential care facilities in Quebec: A case study.
Article in Palliative care and social practice, 2026. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Not yet cited in PubMed.
What it found
Each row is one number read from the abstract, on the scale the paper reported it, with its interval. Left of the dashed line favours the treatment, right favours the comparator. Under each row is the sentence it came from. New to these charts? A ten-minute tutorial.
The abstract states no effect estimate the extractor could read, or names no intervention and outcome on the map, so this paper lights no cell and moves no belief. It is still indexed, cited and linked below.
The trial behind it
Trials whose registry record cites this paper, or whose number appears in the abstract. A trial that started after this paper was published is citing it as background, not reporting it.
Neither the registry nor the abstract names a trial number. If this is a trial report, that itself is worth knowing.
Who cites it
0 citing papers in PubMed.
No citing paper in PubMed yet.
Corrections and comments
PubMed lists nothing against this paper. Absence here is not a guarantee, only a check that was made.
Authors and funding
3 authors.
Funding
No grant is acknowledged in the PubMed record.
Abstract
Background: The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the need for innovative approaches to healthcare delivery, particularly for older adults with frailty in crowded settings. In Québec, Canada, the shortage of hospital beds during the pandemic exposed critical gaps in the capacity to provide appropriate end-of-life care for affected residents of residential care facilities (RCFs). Aim: This study aimed to examine the implementation of the COVID-19 Intensive Home Care Team (IHCT) and how it transformed the physical and social environment of RCFs to enable end-of-life care and "dying at home" in an unprecedented time. Design: A qualitative case study design was used. Between September 2020 and January 2021, qualitative data were collected through 30 in-depth interviews with front-line workers of the IHCT, healthcare managers, and academics in the home care sector. Thematic analysis reveals three interrelated themes: the ambiguities of caring spaces, the centrality of medication management, and the reconfiguration of RCFs through new spatial, technological, and relational arrangements that enabled "dying at home" during the COVID-19 pandemic. Results: Findings revealed that the IHCT initiative reshaped RCFs into a necropolitical space, showing the complex interplay between space, care practices, and societal values toward older adults with frailty. The transformation enabled a form of compassionate end-of-life care within familiar settings as well as exposed underlying societal hierarchies that determine whose lives, and deaths, are valued. Conclusion: The IHCT model illustrates how emergency health interventions can reconfigure care spaces and challenge conventional boundaries between home, private, and public care systems. However, it also underscores the ethical and political dimensions of care for frail older adults in crisis contexts.
Indexed as
Identifiers
What OpenQuestion holds
Registered trials
Read under generation 80e0d062 · epoch 390. Bibliography from PubMed, PubMed Central and OpenAlex; grants from NIH RePORTER; trial links from ClinicalTrials.gov; estimates, votes and beliefs from the OpenQuestion graph.