Introduction: Studies have shown that poor communication between families and the health care team reduces family satisfaction, increases their feelings of guilt, and reduces their ability to make clinical decisions. Studies have also shown that conducting family meetings in a structured format can improve outcomes in various domains
Methods: Intervention: Family meetings within 5-7 days of ICU admission that followed a pre-defined structure and participants included the provider, bedside nurse and the chaplain. After the meetings, we surveyed the families using the FS-ICU-24 survey tool's part-2 that focuses family satisfaction with communication regarding decision-making. This part consists of 10 questions. The responses were on a 5-point Likert scale where 5 represents "Completely Satisfied" and 1 indicates "Very Dissatisfied". Baseline (pre-implementation) surveys were collected from family members from ICU units that did not implement structured family meetings.
Results: There were 82 respondents in the “Baseline” group and 101 respondents in the “post-intervention” group. Mean scores from each group were analyzed using a Student T-test. Family satisfaction improved significantly from the pre-implementation (mean score 4.21) to post-implementation (mean score 4.70), with p < .001. The post-implementation family satisfaction scores were higher for 9 of the 10 component question for p value < 0.05.
Conclusions: The study shows that conducting “Structured Family Meetings” in the ICUs increased families’ satisfaction with decision-making around the care of their loved one.
