Clinician-family relationships may impact neonatal intensive care: clinicians' perspectives.
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ABSTRACT: Objective
Collaborative clinician-family relationships are necessary for the delivery of successful patient- and family-centered care (PFCC) in the NICU. Challenging clinician-family relationships may undermine such collaboration and the potential impacts on patient care are unknown.Study design
Consistent caregivers were surveyed to describe their relationships and collaboration with families of infants hospitalized ≥ 28 days. Medical record review collected infant and family characteristics hypothesized to impact relationships. Mixed methods analysis was performed.Results
Clinicians completed 243 surveys representing 77 families. Clinicians reported low collaboration with families who were not at the bedside and/or did not speak English. Clinicians perceived most clinician-family relationships impact the infant's hospital course. Negative impacts included communication challenges, mistrust or frustration with the team and disruptions to patient care.Conclusion
This study identifies features of clinician-family relationships that may negatively impact an infant's NICU stay. Targeting supports for these families is necessary to achieve effective PFCC.
SUBMITTER: Miller JJ
PROVIDER: S-EPMC8178652 | biostudies-literature |
REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature
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Project description:BackgroundThe use of long-term life-sustaining technology for children improves survival rates in paediatric intensive care units (PICUs), but it may also increase long-term morbidity. One example of this is children who are dependent on invasive long-term ventilation. Clinicians caring for these children navigate an increasing array of ethical complexities. This study looks at the meaning clinicians give to the bioethical considerations associated with the availability of increasingly sophisticated technology.MethodsA hermeneutic phenomenological exploration of the experiences of clinicians in deciding whether to initiate invasive long-term ventilation in children took place, via unstructured interviews. Data were analysed to gain insight into the lived experiences of clinicians. Participants were from PICUs, or closely allied to the care of children in PICUs, in four countries.ResultsThree themes developed from the data that portray the experiences of the clinicians: forming and managing relationships with parents and other clinicians considering, or using, life sustaining technology; the responsibility for moral and professional integrity in the use of technology; and keeping up with technological developments, and the resulting ethical and moral considerations.DiscussionThere are many benefits of the availability of long-term life-sustaining technology for a child, however, clinicians must also consider increasingly complex ethical dilemmas. Bioethical norms are adapting to aid clinicians, but challenges remain.ConclusionDuring a time of technological solutionism, more needs to be understood about the influences on the initiation of invasive long-term ventilation for a child. Further research to better understand how clinicians, and bioethics services, support care delivery may positively impact this arena of health care.
| S-EPMC10386660 | biostudies-literature
Project description:ImportanceLittle is known about whether clinicians and surrogate decision makers follow recommended strategies for shared decision making by incorporating intensive care unit (ICU) patients' values and preferences into treatment decisions.ObjectivesTo determine how often clinicians and surrogates exchange information about patients' previously expressed values and preferences and deliberate and plan treatment based on these factors during conferences about prognosis and goals of care for incapacitated ICU patients.Design, setting, and participantsA secondary analysis of a prospective, multicenter cohort study of audiorecorded clinician-family conferences between surrogates and clinicians of 249 incapacitated, critically ill adults was conducted. The study was performed between October 8, 2009, and October 23, 2012. Data analysis was performed between July 2, 2014, and April 20, 2015. Patient eligibility criteria included lack of decision-making capacity, a diagnosis of acute respiratory distress syndrome, and predicted in-hospital mortality of 50% or more. In addition to the patients, 451 surrogates and 144 clinicians at 13 ICUs at 6 US academic and community medical centers were included.Main outcomes and measuresTwo coders analyzed transcripts of audiorecorded conversations for statements in which clinicians and surrogates exchanged information about patients' treatment preferences and health-related values and applied them in deliberation and treatment planning.ResultsOf the 249 patients, 134 (54.9%) were men; mean (SD) age was 58.2 (16.5) years. Among the 244 conferences that addressed a decision about goals of care, 63 (25.8%; 95% CI, 20.3%-31.3%) contained no information exchange or deliberation about patients' values and preferences. Clinicians and surrogates exchanged information about patients' values and preferences in 167 (68.4%) (95% CI, 62.6%-74.3%) of the conferences and specifically deliberated about how the patients' values applied to the decision in 108 (44.3%; 95% CI, 38.0%-50.5%). Important end-of-life considerations, such as physical, cognitive, and social functioning or spirituality were each discussed in 87 (35.7%) or less of the conferences; surrogates provided a substituted judgment in 33 (13.5%); and clinicians made treatment recommendations based on patients' values and preferences in 20 conferences (8.2%).Conclusions and relevanceMost clinician-family conferences about prognosis and goals of care for critically ill patients appear to lack important elements of communication about values and preferences, with robust deliberation being particularly deficient. Interventions may be needed to better prepare surrogates for these conversations and improve clinicians' communication skills for eliciting and incorporating patients' values and preferences into treatment decisions.
| S-EPMC6503570 | biostudies-literature
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| S-EPMC8600390 | biostudies-literature
Project description: Not available
| S-EPMC8752438 | biostudies-literature
Project description:INTRODUCTION: Communication is one of the key principles in Family-Centered Care (FCC). Studies have shown some drawbacks in communication between families and nurses. Therefore, the present study aimed to recognize the obstacles against nurse-family communication in FCC in Neonatal Intensive Care Unit (NICU). METHODS: This qualitative study was conducted on 8 staff nurses in 2 NICUs affiliated to Shiraz University of Medical Sciences selected through purposive sampling. The data were collected using 8 deep semi-structured interviews and 3 observations. Then, they were analyzed through inductive content analysis. RESULTS: Data analysis resulted in identification of 3 main categories and 7 subcategories. The first category was organizational factors with 2 subcategories of educational domain (inadequate education, lack of a system for nursing student selection, and poor professionalization) and clinical domain (difficult working conditions, lack of an efficient system for ongoing education and evaluation, and authoritarian management). The second category was familial factors with socio-cultural, psychological, and economic subcategories. The last category was the factors related to nurses with socio-cultural and psycho-physical subcategories. CONCLUSION: Identification of the obstacles against nurse-family communication helps managers of healthcare systems to plan and eliminate the challenges of effective communication. Besides, elimination of these factors leads to appropriate strategies in NICUs for effective application of FCC.
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Project description:Family integrated care (FICare) is a collaborative model of neonatal care which aims to address the negative impacts of the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) environment by involving parents as equal partners, minimizing separation, and supporting parent-infant closeness. FICare incorporates psychological, educational, communication, and environmental strategies to support parents to cope with the NICU environment and to prepare them to be able to emotionally, cognitively, and physically care for their infant. FICare has been associated with improved infant feeding, growth, and parent wellbeing and self-efficacy; important mediators for long-term improved infant neurodevelopmental and behavioural outcomes. FICare implementation requires multi-disciplinary commitment, staff motivation, and sufficient time for preparation and readiness for change as professionals relinquish power and control to instead develop collaborative partnerships with parents. Successful FICare implementation and culture change have been applied by neonatal teams internationally, using practical approaches suited to their local environments. Strategies such as parent and staff meetings and relational communication help to break down barriers to change by providing space for the co-creation of knowledge, the negotiation of caregiving roles and the development of trusting relationships. The COVID-19 pandemic highlighted the vulnerability within programs supporting parental presence in neonatal units and the profound impacts of parent-infant separation. New technologies and digital innovations can help to mitigate these challenges, and support renewed efforts to embed FICare philosophy and practice in neonatal care during the COVID-19 recovery and beyond.
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Project description:A neonatal point-of-care ultrasound has multiple applications, but its use has been limited in neonatal intensive care units in the Unites States. An increasing body of evidence suggests that lung ultrasound performed by the neonatologist, at the bedside, is reliable and accurate in differentiating neonatal respiratory conditions, predicting morbidity, and guiding invasive interventions. Recent research has shown that a lung ultrasound can assist the clinician in accurately identifying and managing conditions such as respiratory distress syndrome, transient tachypnea of the newborn, and bronchopulmonary dysplasia. In this review, we discuss basic lung ultrasound terminology, evidence for applications of neonatal lung ultrasound, and its use as a diagnostic and predictive tool for common neonatal respiratory pathologies.
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