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Clinicians' perceptions of the usefulness of a communication facilitator in the intensive care unit.

ABSTRACT: Despite its documented importance, communication between clinicians and patients' families in the intensive care unit often fails to meet families' needs, and interventions to improve communication are needed. Use of a communication facilitator-an additional staff member-to improve communication between clinicians and patients' families is the focus of an ongoing randomized trial. The clinical team's acceptance of the communication facilitator as an integral part of the team is important.To explore clinicians' perceptions of the usefulness of a communication facilitator in the intensive care unit.Fourteen semistructured qualitative interviews to assess perspectives of physicians, nurses, and social workers who had experience with the communication facilitator intervention on the intervention and the role of the facilitator. Methods based on grounded theory were used to analyze the data.Clinicians perceived facilitators as (1) facilitating communication between patients' families and clinicians, (2) providing practical and emotional support for patients' families, and (3) providing practical and emotional support for clinicians. Clinicians were enthusiastic about the communication facilitator but concerned about overlapping or conflicting roles.Clinicians in the intensive care unit saw the facilitator intervention as enhancing communication and supporting both patients' families and clinicians. They also identified the importance of the facilitator within the interdisciplinary team. Negative perceptions about the use of a facilitator should be addressed before the intervention is implemented, in order to ensure its effectiveness.

SUBMITTER: Howell AA

PROVIDER: S-EPMC4701572 | biostudies-literature | 2014 Sep

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Clinicians' perceptions of the usefulness of a communication facilitator in the intensive care unit.

Howell Abigail A AA Nielsen Elizabeth L EL Turner Anne M AM Curtis J Randall JR Engelberg Ruth A RA

American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses 20140901 5

<h4>Background</h4>Despite its documented importance, communication between clinicians and patients' families in the intensive care unit often fails to meet families' needs, and interventions to improve communication are needed. Use of a communication facilitator-an additional staff member-to improve communication between clinicians and patients' families is the focus of an ongoing randomized trial. The clinical team's acceptance of the communication facilitator as an integral part of the team i ...[more]

PMID: 25179033

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Project description:Rationale: Determining when an intensive care unit (ICU) patient is ready for discharge to the ward is a complex daily challenge for any ICU care team. Patients who experience unplanned readmissions to the ICU have increased mortality, length of stay, and cost compared with those not readmitted during their hospital stay. The accuracy of clinician prediction for ICU readmission is unknown.Objectives: To determine the accuracy of ICU physicians and nurses for predicting ICU readmissionsMethods: We conducted a prospective study in the medical ICU of an academic hospital from October 2015 to September 2017. After daily rounding for patients being transferred to the ward, ICU clinicians (nurses, residents, fellows, and attendings) were asked to report the likelihood of readmission within 48 hours (using a 1-10 scale, with 10 being "extremely likely"). The accuracy of the clinician prediction score (1-10) was assessed for all clinicians and by clinician type using sensitivity, specificity, and area under the curve (AUC) for the receiver operating characteristic curve for predicting the primary outcome, which was ICU readmission within 48 hours of ICU discharge.Results: A total of 2,833 surveys was collected for 938 ICU-to-ward transfers, of which 40 (4%) were readmitted to the ICU within 48 hours of transfer. The median clinician likelihood of readmission score was 3 (interquartile range, 2-4). When physician and nurse likelihood scores were combined, the median clinician likelihood score had an AUC of 0.70 (95% confidence interval [CI], 0.62-0.78) for predicting ICU readmission within 48 hours. Nurses were significantly more accurate than interns at predicting 48-hour ICU readmission (AUC, 0.73 [95% CI, 0.64-0.82] vs. AUC, 0.60 [95% CI, 0.49-0.71]; P = 0.03). All other pairwise comparisons were not significantly different for predicting ICU readmission within 48 hours (P > 0.05 for all comparisons).Conclusions: We found that all clinicians surveyed in our ICU, regardless of the level of experience or clinician type, had only fair accuracy for predicting ICU readmission. Further research is needed to determine if clinical decision support tools would provide prognostic value above and beyond clinical judgment for determining who is ready for ICU discharge.

Project description:BackgroundAn intensive care unit (ICU) admission is a stressful event for the patient and the patient's family. Several studies demonstrated symptoms of anxiety, depression, and posttraumatic stress disorder in family members of patients admitted to ICU. Some studies recognize that the open visitation policy (OVP) is related to a reduction in symptoms of anxiety and depression for the patient and an improvement in family satisfaction. However, some issues have been presented as barriers for the adoption of that strategy. This study was designed to evaluate perceptions of physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists (RTs) of an OVP and to quantify visiting times in a Brazilian private intensive care unit (ICU).MethodsThis observational and descriptive study was performed in the medical-surgical (22 beds) and neurologic ICU (8 beds) of Sírio-Libanês Hospital (HSL), São Paulo, Brazil. All physicians, nurses, and RTs from ICU were invited to participate in the study. A questionnaire was applied to all ICU workers who accepted to participate in the study. The questionnaire consisted of 22 questions about the visiting policy. During five consecutive days, we evaluated the time that the visitors stayed in the patient room, as well as the type of visitor.ResultsA total of 106 ICU workers participated in this study (42 physicians, 39 nurses, and 25 RTs). Only three of the questions exposed a negative perception of the visiting policy: 53.3% of the participants do not think that the OVP consistently increases family satisfaction with patient's care; 59.4% of ICU workers think that the OVP impairs the organization of the patient's care; 72.7% of participants believe that their work suffers more interruptions because of the OVP. The median visiting time per day was 11.5 hours.ConclusionsAccording to physicians, nurses, and respiratory therapists, the greatest impact of OVP is the benefit to the patients rather than to the family or to the staff. Furthermore, they feel that they need communication training to better interact with family members who are present in the ICU 24 hours per day.

Project description:Critically ill intensive care unit (ICU) patients commonly develop severe muscle wasting and impaired muscle function, leading to delayed recovery, with subsequent increased morbidity and financial costs, and decrease quality of life of survivors. Acute Quadriplegic Myopathy (AQM) is one of the most common neuromuscular disorders associated with ICU-acquired muscle weakness. Although there are no available treatments for the ICU-acquired muscle weakness, it has been demonstrated that early mobilization can improve its prognosis and functional outcomes. This study aims at improving our understanding of the effects of passive mechanical loading on skeletal muscle structure and function by using a unique experimental rat ICU model allowing analyses of the temporal sequence of changes in mechanically ventilated and pharmacologically paralyzed animals at durations varying from 6 h to 14 days. Results show that passive mechanical loading alleviated the muscle wasting and the loss of force-generation associated with the ICU intervention, resulting in a doubling of the functional capacity of the loaded vs. unloaded muscles after a 2-week ICU intervention. We demonstrated that the improved maintenance of muscle structure and function is likely a consequence of a reduced oxidative stress, and a reduced loss of the molecular motor protein myosin. A complex temporal gene expression pattern, delineated by microarray analysis, was observed with loading-induced changes in transcript levels of sarcomeric proteins, muscle developmental processes, stress response, ECM/cell adhesion proteins and metabolism. Thus, the results from this study show that passive mechanical loading alleviates the severe negative consequences on muscle structure and function associated with mechanical silencing in ICU patients, strongly supporting early and intense physical therapy in immobilized ICU patients. This study aims to unravel the effects of passive mechanical loading on skeletal muscle structure and function in an experimental rat ICU model at duration varying between 6h and 14 days. A total of 23 experimental female Sprague-Dawley rats were included in this study. The experimental rats were anaesthetized, treated with the neuromuscular blocking agent (NMBA) M-NM-1-cobrotoxin, mechanically ventilated and monitored for durations varying from 6h to 4 days (n=13), from 5 to 8 days (n=4), and from 9 to 14 days (n=6). The left leg of the animal was activated for 6 hours at the shortest duration and 12 hours per day at durations 12 hours and longer throughout the experiment, using a mechanical lever arm that produced a continuous passive maximal ankle joint flexions-extensions at a speed of 13.3 cycles per minute. Muscle biopsies were obtained from gastrocnemius muscle (proximal part) immediately after euthanasia, were quickly frozen in liquid propane cooled by liquid nitrogen, and stored at -80M-BM-0C. RNA was extracted.

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Clinicians' perceptions of the usefulness of a communication facilitator in the intensive care unit.

Publications

Clinicians' perceptions of the usefulness of a communication facilitator in the intensive care unit.

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