Background Patient-centered intensive care units (ICUs) are advocated by professional organizations for critical care nursing and medicine. The patient-centered ICU paradigm recognizes the patient-family unit as inseparable and supports visitation designed to meet the needs of patients and patients’ families.
Objectives To understand perceptions about patient-centered ICUs among patients’ family members, physicians, and nurses from 5 ICUs that had restrictive visitation and to guide development of a patient-centered, open visitation paradigm.
Methods Patients’ family members, nurses, and physicians from 5 ICUs with a traditional/restrictive visitation policy at a southeastern academic, tertiary care hospital were invited to participate in focus group meetings to understand perceptions about patient-centered care. All qualitative work was taped, transcribed, reviewed, and corrected after each session. Corrected transcripts and observer notes were integrated and coded.
Results Patients’ families identified facilitators of patient-centeredness as nurses’ and physicians’ communication, concern, compassion, closeness, and flexibility. However, competing roles of control over the patient’s health care served as barriers to a patient-centered paradigm.
Conclusions Patient-centered care is an expectation among patients, patients’ families, and health quality advocates. These exploratory methods increased understanding of the powerful perceptions of family members, physicians, and nurses involved with patient care and provided direction to plan interventions to implement patient-centered, family-supportive ICU services.
Traditional, non-patient-centered environments prevent patients’ families from visiting their loved ones except during predesignated, time-limited periods interspersed throughout a long hospital day.1,2 Dissatisfaction with this traditional visitation paradigm has pushed families to become more involved in their loved one’s care with a greater focus on the transparency of health-care quality.3–11 This focus is evidenced by calls to action for hospitals to examine their current intensive care unit (ICU) visitation practices12–19 and to try entirely open, nonrestrictive ICU visiting, labeling any visiting restrictions as a relic, unnecessary, and potentially harmful to the patient’s safety.13,14
Open visitation is among the defining elements of a patient-centered approach.12 Patient-centered care revolves around the patient, not the physician, nurses, or the facility, and is a priority identified by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN).15 In addition, to achieve a Magnet Recognition Program, exemplifying excellence in nursing practice, hospitals must adopt a conceptual framework that includes family-centered care.16 Family-centered care and patient-centered care are simultaneous approaches toward self-governance of health care.11 Despite worldwide and national priorities/standards incorporating families into the decision making and care of ICU patients,10–19 as many as 90% of ICUs in US hospitals have a restrictive visitation policy.1
Restricted ICU visitation traditions foster beliefs that visitors obstruct nursing and medical care, exhaust patients, interfere with healing and/or cause negative physiological effects, pose an increased infection risk, jeopardize patients’ privacy, and create unsafe environments.13,17,20–22 Other studies12,13,20,21,23–28 have shown contrary findings; family visitation contributed to improved physiological measures and lower stress for patients and increased job satisfaction for nurses.
As this study was the first phase of a patient-centered care project, the aims were to examine perceptions related to traditional/restricted ICU visitation among patients’ families, nurses, and physicians, to understand barriers and issues, and to gauge the generalizability of others’ work. Understanding the barriers to patient-centered care may support future interventions aimed at reshaping the current ICU culture to align with a patient-centered paradigm.
Open visitation is among the defining elements of a patient-centered approach.
Previous Section
Next Section
Methods
This study’s setting was an academic, tertiary care, Magnet Recognition Program hospital with a level I trauma center designation and 900 licensed adult beds. Approval was obtained from the institutional review board for human subjects research.
Five of 8 ICUs adhering to a traditional restrictive visitation policy were the focus of this project (trauma, surgical, medical, neurosurgical, cardiothoracic surgery), each with 20 to 28 beds. All 5 units posted similar strictly enforced visiting hours, limiting visitation to 2 people for 30-minute visits, 4 times a day.
Previous Section
Next Section
Design
Focus Groups
Criteria for participation were as follows: the family member’s patient must be 18 years or older with a minimum ICU stay of 72 hours, and the family member participant must be 18 years or older, speak English, and must have visited the ICU patient at least twice. Three family focus group meetings were held on different days and preceded 2 focus groups for nurses and 1 focus group for physicians that met on the same day. Participants included attending physicians practicing in the ICUs and nurses chosen from all shifts in the 5 ICUs.
Data Collection and Analyses
All focus group sessions were voice recorded and facilitated by 1 group leader and 1 assistant. Written informed consent was provided by all focus group participants. Transcriptions from the voice-recorded tapes were analyzed by following procedures and guidelines developed by Lee et al,22 Dawson et al,29 and Miles and Huberman.30
Previous Section
Next Section
Results
The focus groups consisted of 8 different female family members representing 4 of the 5 ICUs; 2 male physicians and 1 female physician represented rotations in all but the surgical ICU; and 1 male nurse and 6 female nurses represented all 5 ICUs. Feelings and beliefs about families’ ICU visitation experiences varied among the patients’ families, physicians, and nurses.
Role of Families
Patients’ family members thought that they knew their ICU family member better than anyone and were in the best position to provide a voice for and emotional support to their loved one (Table 1). Through vigilant watchfulness, interpretations of body movements or noises (eg, tracheotomy sounds, facial expressions), and recognition of the patient’s needs (eg, repositioning), the family member performed, assisted, or initiated an intervention. As surrogates, patients’ family members believed that they “should always be involved” and should have the opportunity to ask as many questions as necessary to satisfy their decision-making needs. In addition, the physicians and nurses needed to explain to them what was occurring with their family member’s medical care (Table 1).
View this table:
In this window
In a new window
Table 1
Roles in the intensive care unit (ICU)
Physicians agreed that patients’ families had a role in the ICU; they did not agree that this role coincided with a stationary physical presence in the ICU. Physicians were not in support of open family visitation but viewed the role of patients’ families as prominent once the patients are discharged from the ICU (Table 1). Physicians saw themselves as opposing 24-hour visitation to safeguard the patients’ families and patients (Table 1).
Nurses were divided about the roles of patients’ families in the ICU, with beliefs ranging from opposing open visitation in the ICU, to stating that open visitation would detract from patient care (Table 1), to the belief that patients belong to their families who care about them and that patients’ families should not be denied visitation opportunities. Nurses’ beliefs also included that the best examinations of patients occurred when patients’ families were present and that taking care of the patients’ family might be the only gift that a nurse can give to a dying patient (Table 1).
Communication
Patients’ families, physicians, and nurses believed that sharing information about a patient’s health status was important and necessary. Families felt “panic” if their loved one’s health status was not reported in a timely manner and felt scared making caregiver decisions that were based on infrequent medical updates (Table 2). Families felt comforted when greeted with personal inquiries and given a progress report on their loved one’s condition. In addition, patients’ families wanted health status information delivered from the physician, referencing “adequate” delivery from nurses but that physicians were the only ones who could provide certain information (eg, prognosis).
View this table:
In this window
In a new window
Table 2
Communication
Communication content was also important. One family member anticipated her husband’s discharge when told that her husband was “stable,” but the physician stated, “No, stable means ‘critically stable’ in the ICU”; the family member labeled “critically stable” as a “new word” but paradoxical. Another family member stated that health care workers needed to “learn how to talk to patients’ family members” and to demonstrate empathy (Table 2). One family member mentioned that the longer the ICU stay, the more the communication process was taken for granted (Table 2).
Nurses believed that the best examinations of patients occurred when patients’ families were present.
Physicians shared beliefs that patients’ families, as the primary caregivers outside the ICU, should receive detailed information about patients. Yet, physicians also believed their primary obligation was to patient care. Physicians stated that making rounds included acute interventions and there was no time to spare for communicating with patients’ families (Table 2), and as teachers, they attributed their time constrain
Background Patient-centered intensive care units (ICUs) are advocated by professional organizations for critical care nursing and medicine. The patient-centered ICU paradigm recognizes the patient-family unit as inseparable and supports visitation designed to meet the needs of patients and patients’ families.Objectives To understand perceptions about patient-centered ICUs among patients’ family members, physicians, and nurses from 5 ICUs that had restrictive visitation and to guide development of a patient-centered, open visitation paradigm.Methods Patients’ family members, nurses, and physicians from 5 ICUs with a traditional/restrictive visitation policy at a southeastern academic, tertiary care hospital were invited to participate in focus group meetings to understand perceptions about patient-centered care. All qualitative work was taped, transcribed, reviewed, and corrected after each session. Corrected transcripts and observer notes were integrated and coded.Results Patients’ families identified facilitators of patient-centeredness as nurses’ and physicians’ communication, concern, compassion, closeness, and flexibility. However, competing roles of control over the patient’s health care served as barriers to a patient-centered paradigm.Conclusions Patient-centered care is an expectation among patients, patients’ families, and health quality advocates. These exploratory methods increased understanding of the powerful perceptions of family members, physicians, and nurses involved with patient care and provided direction to plan interventions to implement patient-centered, family-supportive ICU services.Traditional, non-patient-centered environments prevent patients’ families from visiting their loved ones except during predesignated, time-limited periods interspersed throughout a long hospital day.1,2 Dissatisfaction with this traditional visitation paradigm has pushed families to become more involved in their loved one’s care with a greater focus on the transparency of health-care quality.3–11 This focus is evidenced by calls to action for hospitals to examine their current intensive care unit (ICU) visitation practices12–19 and to try entirely open, nonrestrictive ICU visiting, labeling any visiting restrictions as a relic, unnecessary, and potentially harmful to the patient’s safety.13,14Open visitation is among the defining elements of a patient-centered approach.12 Patient-centered care revolves around the patient, not the physician, nurses, or the facility, and is a priority identified by the American Association of Critical-Care Nurses (AACN).15 In addition, to achieve a Magnet Recognition Program, exemplifying excellence in nursing practice, hospitals must adopt a conceptual framework that includes family-centered care.16 Family-centered care and patient-centered care are simultaneous approaches toward self-governance of health care.11 Despite worldwide and national priorities/standards incorporating families into the decision making and care of ICU patients,10–19 as many as 90% of ICUs in US hospitals have a restrictive visitation policy.1Restricted ICU visitation traditions foster beliefs that visitors obstruct nursing and medical care, exhaust patients, interfere with healing and/or cause negative physiological effects, pose an increased infection risk, jeopardize patients’ privacy, and create unsafe environments.13,17,20–22 Other studies12,13,20,21,23–28 have shown contrary findings; family visitation contributed to improved physiological measures and lower stress for patients and increased job satisfaction for nurses.เป็นการศึกษานี้ ในเฟสแรกของโครงการดูแลผู้ป่วยแปลก จุดมุ่งหมายได้ตรวจสอบภาพลักษณ์คอร์รัปชันที่เกี่ยวข้องกับแบบดั้งเดิม/จำกัดเยี่ยมชมฉุกเฉินผู้ป่วยครอบครัว พยาบาล และ แพทย์ เข้าใจปัญหาและอุปสรรค และวัด generalizability งานของคนอื่น เข้าใจอุปสรรคการดูแลผู้ป่วยแปลกอาจสนับสนุนการแทรกแซงในอนาคตมุ่ง reshaping วัฒนธรรมฉุกเฉินปัจจุบันให้สอดคล้องกับกระบวนทัศน์ที่ผู้ป่วยแปลกเปิดเยี่ยมชมเป็นหนึ่งในองค์ประกอบการกำหนดวิธีที่ผู้ป่วยแปลกส่วนก่อนหน้านี้ส่วนถัดไปวิธีการการตั้งค่าของการศึกษานี้เป็นการศึกษา ระดับมหาวิทยาลัยดูแล โรงพยาบาลแม่เหล็กการโปรแกรมระดับฉันบาดเจ็บศูนย์กำหนดและ 900 เตียงผู้ใหญ่ที่ได้รับอนุญาต อนุมัติได้รับจากคณะกรรมการตรวจสอบสถาบันวิจัยเรื่องมนุษย์ห้ายึดมั่นนโยบายตรวจค้นเข้มงวดดั้งเดิม ICUs 8 มีจุดเน้นของโครงการนี้ (บาดเจ็บ ศัลยกรรมผ่าตัด แพทย์ neurosurgical, cardiothoracic), มีเตียง 20-28 หน่วย 5 ทั้งหมดที่ลงรายการบัญชีเหมือนอย่างเคร่งครัดบังคับเยี่ยมชมชั่วโมง จำกัดเยี่ยมชม 2 คนสำหรับเข้าชม 30 นาที วันละ 4 ครั้งส่วนก่อนหน้านี้ส่วนถัดไปการออกแบบกลุ่มโฟกัสCriteria for participation were as follows: the family member’s patient must be 18 years or older with a minimum ICU stay of 72 hours, and the family member participant must be 18 years or older, speak English, and must have visited the ICU patient at least twice. Three family focus group meetings were held on different days and preceded 2 focus groups for nurses and 1 focus group for physicians that met on the same day. Participants included attending physicians practicing in the ICUs and nurses chosen from all shifts in the 5 ICUs.Data Collection and AnalysesAll focus group sessions were voice recorded and facilitated by 1 group leader and 1 assistant. Written informed consent was provided by all focus group participants. Transcriptions from the voice-recorded tapes were analyzed by following procedures and guidelines developed by Lee et al,22 Dawson et al,29 and Miles and Huberman.30Previous SectionNext SectionResultsThe focus groups consisted of 8 different female family members representing 4 of the 5 ICUs; 2 male physicians and 1 female physician represented rotations in all but the surgical ICU; and 1 male nurse and 6 female nurses represented all 5 ICUs. Feelings and beliefs about families’ ICU visitation experiences varied among the patients’ families, physicians, and nurses.Role of FamiliesPatients’ family members thought that they knew their ICU family member better than anyone and were in the best position to provide a voice for and emotional support to their loved one (Table 1). Through vigilant watchfulness, interpretations of body movements or noises (eg, tracheotomy sounds, facial expressions), and recognition of the patient’s needs (eg, repositioning), the family member performed, assisted, or initiated an intervention. As surrogates, patients’ family members believed that they “should always be involved” and should have the opportunity to ask as many questions as necessary to satisfy their decision-making needs. In addition, the physicians and nurses needed to explain to them what was occurring with their family member’s medical care (Table 1).
View this table:
In this window
In a new window
Table 1
Roles in the intensive care unit (ICU)
Physicians agreed that patients’ families had a role in the ICU; they did not agree that this role coincided with a stationary physical presence in the ICU. Physicians were not in support of open family visitation but viewed the role of patients’ families as prominent once the patients are discharged from the ICU (Table 1). Physicians saw themselves as opposing 24-hour visitation to safeguard the patients’ families and patients (Table 1).
Nurses were divided about the roles of patients’ families in the ICU, with beliefs ranging from opposing open visitation in the ICU, to stating that open visitation would detract from patient care (Table 1), to the belief that patients belong to their families who care about them and that patients’ families should not be denied visitation opportunities. Nurses’ beliefs also included that the best examinations of patients occurred when patients’ families were present and that taking care of the patients’ family might be the only gift that a nurse can give to a dying patient (Table 1).
Communication
Patients’ families, physicians, and nurses believed that sharing information about a patient’s health status was important and necessary. Families felt “panic” if their loved one’s health status was not reported in a timely manner and felt scared making caregiver decisions that were based on infrequent medical updates (Table 2). Families felt comforted when greeted with personal inquiries and given a progress report on their loved one’s condition. In addition, patients’ families wanted health status information delivered from the physician, referencing “adequate” delivery from nurses but that physicians were the only ones who could provide certain information (eg, prognosis).
View this table:
In this window
In a new window
Table 2
Communication
Communication content was also important. One family member anticipated her husband’s discharge when told that her husband was “stable,” but the physician stated, “No, stable means ‘critically stable’ in the ICU”; the family member labeled “critically stable” as a “new word” but paradoxical. Another family member stated that health care workers needed to “learn how to talk to patients’ family members” and to demonstrate empathy (Table 2). One family member mentioned that the longer the ICU stay, the more the communication process was taken for granted (Table 2).
Nurses believed that the best examinations of patients occurred when patients’ families were present.
Physicians shared beliefs that patients’ families, as the primary caregivers outside the ICU, should receive detailed information about patients. Yet, physicians also believed their primary obligation was to patient care. Physicians stated that making rounds included acute interventions and there was no time to spare for communicating with patients’ families (Table 2), and as teachers, they attributed their time constrain
การแปล กรุณารอสักครู่..