Involving relatives in ICU patient care: critical care nursing challenges

Bridget McConnell and Tracey Moroney

Journal of Clinical Nursing, 2015, vol. 24, issue 7-8, 991-998

Abstract: Aims and objectives To identify the barriers critical care nurses experience to relative involvement in intensive care unit patient care. Background Previous studies have discussed the experiences of relatives visiting an intensive care unit, the needs of relatives in the intensive care environment, critical care nurse and relative interaction, intensive care unit visiting policies and the benefits of including relatives in patient care. The barriers that critical care nurses experience to relative involvement in patient care have received minimal exploration. Design Critical care nurses were recruited for a mixed methods study. An explanatory mixed method design was used, with two phases. Phase 1 was Quantitative and Phase 2 was Qualitative. Methods Data collection occurred over five months in 2012–2013. Phase 1 used an online questionnaire (n = 70), and semi‐structured interviews (n = 6) were conducted in Phase 2. Phase 1 participants were 70 critical care nurses working in Australian intensive care units and six critical care nurses were recruited from a single Sydney intensive care unit for Phase 2. Through sequential data collection, Phase 1 results formed the development of Phase 2 interview questions. Results Participants reported various barriers to relative involvement in critically ill patient care. Factors related to the intensive care unit patient, the intensive care unit relative, the critical care nurse and the intensive care environment contributed to difficulties encompassing relative involvement. Conclusions This study has identified that when considering relative involvement in patient care, critical care nurses take on a paternalistic role. The barriers experienced to relative involvement result in the individual critical care nurse deciding to include or exclude relatives from patient care. Relevance to clinical practice Knowledge of the barriers to relative involvement in critically ill patient care may provide a basis for improving discussion on this topic and may assist intensive care units to implement strategies to reduce barriers.

Date: 2015
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (2)

Downloads: (external link)
https://doi.org/10.1111/jocn.12755

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:wly:jocnur:v:24:y:2015:i:7-8:p:991-998

Access Statistics for this article

More articles in Journal of Clinical Nursing from John Wiley & Sons
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Wiley Content Delivery ().