• Anahat Dhillon, Francesca Tardini, Edward Bittner, Ulrich Schmidt, Rae Allain, and Luca Bigatello.
• Department of Anesthesiology and Perioperative Medicine, UCLA, Los Angeles, CA. Electronic address: adhillon@mednet.ucla.edu.
• J Crit Care. 2014 Dec 1;29(6):919-22.

PurposeRelatives of patients in the intensive care unit (ICU) are often dissatisfied with family-physician communication. Our prospective preintervention and postintervention study tested the hypothesis that introducing this informed consent process would improve family satisfaction with the ICU process of care.Materials And MethodsWe developed a consent form that included an introductory explanation of the main ICU interventions and a description of 8 common procedures in a surgical ICU. We administered it early in the ICU course during a scheduled family meeting. The study was a prospective preintervention and postintervention design.ResultsThe "Family Satisfaction in the Intensive Care Unit" (FS-ICU) score was higher in the intervention than in the control group (95.4±4 vs 78.2±22, P<.001). The nursing perception of satisfaction with care was also higher in the intervention group (95.8±13 vs 71.9±28, P<.001).ConclusionA bundled informed consent resulted in higher family satisfaction with the process of care in ICU.Copyright © 2014 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.

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