Response to Letter on the Publication of the Article Titled ‘Experiences of Individuals With Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease and Their Caregivers During the Pandemic: A Systematic Review’ Published in Nursing Open (2026; 13:e70462)

Dear Dr. Fontenot,

We would like to offer a response to the letter which provided feedback on our recently‐published systematic review examining the experiences of individuals with Chronic Obstructive Pulmonary Disease (IwCOPD) and their caregivers during the Covid‐19 pandemic (Deane‐King et al. 2026). We appreciate the author's interest in this publication, especially given their extensive experience in caring for IwCOPD in a clinical context, and are largely in agreement with the comments made. We provide more specific responses to each point below.

Firstly, the author highlights the disproportion of caregiver‐related evidence in our review, which limits the generalizability of the conclusions drawn. We completely agree that the lack of caregiver participants in the studies reviewed was a key limitation. The small number of articles addressing the experience of COPD family carers implies a definite gap in research regarding this group. Encouragingly, since our initial searches were completed, more work is being conducted on caregiver experience (Gholami et al. 2025; Pendoni et al. 2023). However, there is still a need for more work exploring the experience of those providing support for IwCOPD.

Secondly, the author notes how the review uncovered conflicting evidence regarding changes in exacerbation levels during the pandemic. A good point is made regarding the potential role of nursing‐related confounding factors and also that exacerbation levels may have been underreported due to hospital avoidance. We recognise the inherent difficulty in providing clear actionable recommendations based on these divergent findings which is reflective of the diversity in contexts, methodologies and samples in the studies reviewed. We suggest that consideration of more context‐specific guidelines may be of benefit in this respect. For example, in our own recent research in the Irish context (Deane‐King and Maguire 2026 under review), we find how specific experiences of IwCOPD and caregivers in Ireland can inform recommendations regarding strategies for increasing COPD awareness, medication adherence, and more specific provision of supports.

Finally, the author notes how there is insufficient attention paid to nursing‐specific interventions and the role of nurses during the pandemic. We would like to acknowledge this point; however, note that the review was conducted and interpreted under a health psychology lens with the lead author's experience of caring for a family member with IwCOPD, and thus was intended primarily to explore patient and caregiver experiences during the pandemic period, rather than evaluate specific interventions per se. We acknowledge that having an author with clinical expertise may have strengthened the interpretations of findings.

We would like to thank the author for their feedback. The interest in the review by the writer is very much appreciated and we will carefully consider these points made in our future research.

Yours sincerely,

Jennifer Deane‐King, Jamie Howell and Rebecca Maguire

Funding

The authors have nothing to report.

Conflicts of Interest

The authors declare no conflicts of interest.

Linked Articles

This article is linked to Deane‐King et al. paper. To view this article, visit https://doi.org/10.1002/nop2.70462.

Data Availability Statement

Data sharing not applicable to this article as no datasets were generated or analysed during the current study.