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Availability and Quality of Grief and Bereavement Care in Pediatric Intensive Care Units Around the World, Opportunities for Improvement.

ABSTRACT: Pediatric Intensive Care Units (PICUs) provide multidisciplinary care to critically ill children and their families. Grief is present throughout the trajectory of illness and can peak around the time of death or non-death losses. The objective of this study was to assess how PICUs around the world implement grief and bereavement care (GBC) as part of an integrated model of care. This is a multicenter cross-sectional, prospective survey study. Questionnaires with multiple-choice and open-ended questions focusing on unit infrastructure, personnel, policies, limited patient data, and practices related to GBC for families and health care professionals (HCPs) were completed by on-site researchers, who were HCPs on the direct care of patients. PICU fulfillment of GBC goals was evaluated using a custom scoring based on indicators developed by the Initiative for Pediatric Palliative Care (IPPC). We compared average total and individual items fulfillment scores according to the respective country's World Bank income. Patient characteristics and details of unit infrastructure were also evaluated as potential predictors of total GBC fulfillment scores. Statistical analysis included multilevel generalized linear models (GLM) with a Gaussian distribution adjusted by child age/gender and clustering by center, using high income countries (HICs) as the comparative reference. Additionally, we applied principals of content analysis to analyze and summarize open-ended answers to contextualize qualitative data. The study included 34 PICUs from 18 countries: high-income countries (HICs): 32.4%, upper middle-income countries (UMICs): 44.1%, low middle-income and low-income countries (LMI/LICs): 23.5%. All groups reported some compliance with GBC goals; no group reported perfect fulfillment. We found statistically significant differences in GBC fulfillment scores between HICs and UMICs (specifically, HCP grief support), and between HICs and LMICs (specifically, family grief support and HCP grief support). PICUs world-wide provide some GBC, independent of income, but barriers include lack of financial support, time, and training, overall unit culture, presence of a palliative care consultation service, and varying cultural perceptions of child death. Disparities in GBC for families and HCPs exist and were related to the native countries' income level. Identifying barriers to support families and HCPs, can lead to opportunities of improving GBC in PICUs world-wide.

SUBMITTER: Grunauer M

PROVIDER: S-EPMC8634722 | biostudies-literature |

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature

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Project description:BackgroundThe uptake of evidence-based therapies in the intensive care environment is suboptimal, particularly in limited-resource countries. Checklists, daily goal assessments, and clinician prompts may improve compliance with best practice processes of care and, in turn, improve clinical outcomes. However, the available evidence on the effectiveness of checklists is unreliable and inconclusive, and the mechanisms are poorly understood. We aim to evaluate whether the use of a multifaceted quality improvement intervention, including the use of a checklist and the definition of daily care goals during multidisciplinary daily rounds and clinician prompts, can improve the in-hospital mortality of patients admitted to intensive care units (ICUs). Our secondary objectives are to assess the effects of the study intervention on specific processes of care, clinical outcomes, and the safety culture and to determine which factors (the processes of care and/or safety culture) mediate the effect of the study intervention on mortality.Methods/designThis is a cluster randomized trial involving 118 ICUs in Brazil conducted in two phases. In the observational preparatory phase, we collect baseline data on processes of care and clinical outcomes from 60 consecutive patients with lengths of ICU stay longer than 48 h and apply the Safety Attitudes Questionnaire (SAQ) to 75% or more of the health care staff in each ICU. In the randomized phase, we assign ICUs to the experimental or control arm and repeat data collection. Experimental arm ICUs receive the multifaceted quality improvement intervention, including a checklist and definition of daily care goals during daily multidisciplinary rounds, clinician prompting, and feedback on rates of adherence to selected care processes. Control arm ICUs maintain usual care. The primary outcome is in-hospital mortality, truncated at 60 days. Secondary outcomes include the rates of adherence to appropriate care processes, rates of other clinical outcomes, and scores on the SAQ domains. Analysis follows the intention-to-treat principle, and the primary outcome is analyzed using mixed effects logistic regression.DiscussionThis is a large scale, pragmatic cluster-randomized trial evaluating whether a multifaceted quality improvement intervention, including checklists applied during the multidisciplinary daily rounds and clinician prompting, can improve the adoption of proven therapies and decrease the mortality of critically ill patients. If this study finds that the intervention reduces mortality, it may be widely adopted in intensive care units, even those in limited-resource settings.Trial registrationClinicalTrials.gov NCT01785966.

Project description:Background/objectiveBereaved family surrogates from intensive care units (ICU) are at risk of comorbid anxiety, depression, and post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), but the temporal reciprocal relationships among them have only been examined once among veterans. This study aimed to longitudinally investigate these never-before-examined temporal reciprocal relationships for ICU family members over their first two bereavement years.MethodsIn this prospective, longitudinal, observational study, symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD were assessed among 321 family surrogates of ICU decedents from 2 academically affiliated hospitals in Taiwan by the anxiety and depression subscales of the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale, and the Impact of Event Scale-Revised, respectively at 1, 3, 6, 13, 18, and 24 months postloss. Cross-lagged panel modeling was conducted to longitudinally examine the temporal reciprocal relationships among anxiety, depression, and PTSD.ResultsExamined psychological-distress levels were markedly stable over the first 2 bereavement years: autoregressive coefficients for symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD were 0.585-0.770, 0.546-0.780, and 0.440-0.780, respectively. Cross-lag coefficients showed depressive symptoms predicted PTSD symptoms in the first bereavement year, whereas PTSD symptoms predicted depressive symptoms in the second bereavement year. Anxiety symptoms predicted symptoms of depression and PTSD at 13 and 24 months postloss, whereas depressive symptoms predicted anxiety symptoms at 3 and 6 months postloss while PTSD symptoms predicted anxiety symptoms during the second bereavement year.ConclusionsDifferent patterns of temporal relationships among symptoms of anxiety, depression, and PTSD over the first 2 bereavement years present important opportunities to target symptoms of specific psychological distress at different points during bereavement to prevent the onset, exacerbation, or maintenance of subsequent psychological distress.

Project description:BackgroundThe role of telemedicine in intensive care has been increasing steadily. Tele-intensive care unit (ICU) interventions are varied and can be used in different levels of treatment, often with direct implications for the intensive care processes. Although a substantial body of primary and secondary literature has been published on the topic, there is a need for broadening the understanding of the organizational factors influencing the effectiveness of telemedical interventions in the ICU.ObjectiveThis scoping review aims to provide a map of existing evidence on tele-ICU interventions, focusing on the analysis of the implementation context and identifying areas for further technological research.MethodsA research protocol outlining the method has been published in JMIR Research Protocols. This review follows the PRISMA-ScR (Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses Extension for Scoping Reviews). A core research team was assembled to provide feedback and discuss findings.ResultsA total of 3019 results were retrieved. After screening, 25 studies were included in the final analysis. We were able to characterize the context of tele-ICU studies and identify three use cases for tele-ICU interventions. The first use case is extending coverage, which describes interventions aimed at extending the availability of intensive care capabilities. The second use case is improving compliance, which includes interventions targeted at improving patient safety, intensive care best practices, and quality of care. The third use case, facilitating transfer, describes telemedicine interventions targeted toward the management of patient transfers to or from the ICU.ConclusionsThe benefits of tele-ICU interventions have been well documented for centralized systems aimed at extending critical care capabilities in a community setting and improving care compliance in tertiary hospitals. No strong evidence has been found on the reduction of patient transfers following tele-ICU intervention.International registered report identifier (irrid)RR2-10.2196/19695.

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Availability and Quality of Grief and Bereavement Care in Pediatric Intensive Care Units Around the World, Opportunities for Improvement.

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