• J Clin Nurs · Jun 2012

    Needs of adult family members of intensive care unit patients.

    • Kelley Obringer, Cheryl Hilgenberg, and Kathy Booker.
    • St. John's College of Nursing, Springfield, IL 62702, USA. Kelley.obringer@st-johns.org
    • J Clin Nurs. 2012 Jun 1; 21 (11-12): 1651-8.

    Aims And ObjectivesThe purpose of this research was to examine current perceptions of adult family members' needs of intensive care unit patients in the Midwest, USA. Examining family needs may help determine effectiveness of guideline implementation.BackgroundFamily needs of intensive care unit patients is a topic widely researched, but to date, the application of that research to the clinical practice guidelines is limited. Family members' of intensive care unit patients often experience stress and anxiety because of the high mortality rate of patients in intensive care. Family members are often involved with the patient's care especially as many units have open visitation policies.DesignSurvey.MethodThe Critical Care Family Needs Inventory was distributed to a convenience sample of 50 family members from a Central Illinois, not-for-profit, 22-bed intensive care unit in the USA.ResultsForty-five adult family members returned completed questionnaires. The majority of the sample was female (66·7%), 40% were 49-64 years old. The majority of the sample of family members was spouses (36%) or adult children (36%). Eighty per cent of these family members reported they had previously visited a patient in the intensive care unit. Results of the survey revealed family members perceived assurance as the highest needs categories and support as the least important need.ConclusionsFindings were consistent with earlier studies identifying assurance as a very important need. After publication of clinical practice guidelines for support of the family in the patient-centred intensive care unit, families continue to report the need for assurance.Relevance To Clinical PracticeNurses need to give increased attention to effectively implementing clinical practice guidelines in an effort to meet family members' needs, especially those related to assurance. Assurance may be expressed differently by various cultures.© 2012 Blackwell Publishing Ltd.

      Pubmed     Full text   Copy Citation     Plaintext  

      Add institutional full text...

    Notes

     
    Knowledge, pearl, summary or comment to share?
    300 characters remaining
    help        
    You can also include formatting, links, images and footnotes in your notes
    • Simple formatting can be added to notes, such as *italics*, _underline_ or **bold**.
    • Superscript can be denoted by <sup>text</sup> and subscript <sub>text</sub>.
    • Numbered or bulleted lists can be created using either numbered lines 1. 2. 3., hyphens - or asterisks *.
    • Links can be included with: [my link to pubmed](http://pubmed.com)
    • Images can be included with: ![alt text](https://bestmedicaljournal.com/study_graph.jpg "Image Title Text")
    • For footnotes use [^1](This is a footnote.) inline.
    • Or use an inline reference [^1] to refer to a longer footnote elseweher in the document [^1]: This is a long footnote..

    hide…