AACN advanced critical care
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Critical care providers are responsible for many aspects of patient care, primarily focusing on preserving life. However, nearly 40% of patients who are admitted to an adult critical care unit will not survive. ⋯ Often, health care providers are not trained, experienced, or comfortable facilitating these conversations. This article describes a quality improvement project that identified current views on end-of-life communication in the intensive care unit and potential barriers that obstruct open discussion, and offering strategies for improvement.
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Awareness of patient-centered and family-centered care research can assist clinicians to promote patient and family engagement in the intensive care unit. Project Dispatch (Disseminating Patient-Centered Outcomes Research to Healthcare Professionals) was developed to disseminate patient- and family-centered care research and encourage its application in clinical practice. ⋯ The project's webpages received more than 5200 page views with over 4000 unique visitors from 36 countries. The podcast series has download numbers ranging from 35 596 for "Family Presence in the ICU" to 25 843 for "Improving Patient and Family satisfaction in the ICU" and 22 148 for "Family Satisfaction in the ICU." The project therefore successfully developed resources for critical care health care professionals to promote the patient- and family-centric perspective.