Family satisfaction in the intensive care unit: a quantitative and qualitative analysis

Abstract

Families report high satisfaction with intensive care. Nevertheless, there is room for improvement, in particular regarding how ICU staff communicate with families and provide emotional support.

Family-Reported Experiences Evaluation (FREE) study: a mixed-methods study to evaluate families’ satisfaction with adult critical care services in the NHS

“…The finding of high internal consistency is consistent with both the original study that derived the FS-ICU-24 in North America (Cronbach's alpha 0.94 for the overall family satisfaction score, 0.92 for satisfaction with care and 0.88 for satisfaction with decision-making) 11 and subsequent single-hospital validations in the Philippines (among family members of non-survivors only, 0.96 for the overall family satisfaction score and 0.94 for both satisfaction with care and satisfaction with decision-making), 38 Germany (≥ 0.88 for all three scores), 39 Turkey (0.95 for the overall family satisfaction score) 40 and three studies from Greece (0.9-0.96 for the overall family satisfaction score [41][42][43] and 0.90-0.92 for satisfaction with care 42 ).…”

“…Schwarzkopf et al 39 (in a multicentre evaluation of family satisfaction using the German version of the FS-ICU-24) found no factors significantly associated with the overall family satisfaction score among 215 family members of both ICU survivors and non-survivors. The factors considered were family member age, sex, relationship to patient and number of visits per week, and patient age, sex, median Sequential Organ Failure Assessment Score, median SAPS II, admission type, development of severe sepsis, ICU length of stay and ICU mortality.…”

“…Of the 21 studies, 16 were based on single publications from a single cohort 17,[38][39][40][41][42][55][56][57][72][73][74][75][78][79][80] and five were based on multiple publications from overlapping cohorts. 9,10,53,54,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71]76,77 These studies are reported between 2002 and 2014.…”

“…Most of the studies were based in North America -the USA (n = 9) 53,54,[59][60][61][62][63][64][65][66][67][68][69][70][71][72][73][76][77][78][79][80] and Canada (n = 3) 9,10,56,74 -with other studies based in Greece (n = 2), 41,42 Switzerland (n = 2), 17,55 Germany (n = 1), 39 Israel (n = 1), 57 the Netherlands (n = 1), 75 the Philippines (n = 1) 38 and Turkey (n = 1). 40 Nine studies were single centre, with the remainder being multicentre, ranging from 2 to 23 centres.…”

Year in review in Intensive Care Medicine 2013: II. Sedation, invasive and noninvasive ventilation, airways, ARDS, ECMO, family satisfaction, end-of-life care, organ donation, informed consent, safety, hematological issues in critically ill patients

“…As satisfaction with care is increasingly considered a marker of quality of care, it is important to consider the diverse factors that influence patient and family satisfaction. Another study exploring family satisfaction in the ICU was an observational study performed in four ICUs of a single university hospital in Germany by Schwarzkopf and colleagues [56]. This study was a combination of quantitative and qualitative methods to explore the determinants of family satisfaction.…”