Family Presence on Multidisciplinary Patient Care Rounds in ICU

Family presence on patient care rounds in adult intensive care units remains the least studied area of family-centered care. Despite support from professional organizations and critical care experts, very few critical care units in the United States have written policies allowing family presence (Davidson, 2013). This multidisciplinary prospective, quasi-experimental design study examined if there is a difference in patient and family satisfaction between rounding in the presence of family compared to patient rounding without family members in the adult intensive care unit and determined the nurses' and health care professionals' attitudes toward family presence during multidisciplinary patient care rounds in the ICU of two hospitals. The sample was 150 patients and family members (75 per hospital) and a convenience sampling of 90 healthcare professionals from the two sites. This investigation will have a potential impact on nursing practice and research. Findings obtained from this study may provide further concrete information on the effect of family presence during multidisciplinary patient care rounds, and patient and family satisfaction that will develop policies and standardized approaches to rounding processes that are innovative in diverse critical care settings as well as other non-critical care settings. Data obtained from this research will be used to create patient and family-centered care plans, add new knowledge and educational programs for healthcare professionals