Family support person role during resuscitation: A qualitative exploration

Abstract

Aims and objectives: To provide guidance to nurses by examining how critical care nurses perceive and perform the family support person role during resuscitation.

Background: Nurses can serve as family support person when families witness a loved one's resuscitation. However, few studies have examined the role of family support person to provide nurses with sufficient knowledge to enact the role.

Design: An exploratory-descriptive qualitative design with individual, semi-structured interviews.

Methods: Sixteen critical care nurses who had served as family support person completed interviews. The data were analysed by thematic analysis. COREQ guidelines were followed.

Results: Six themes were identified: Hard but Rewarding Role, Be With, Assess, First Moments, Explain and Support. Findings explicated nurses' perceptions of the role and key role activities.

Conclusions: Nurses perceived the role as hard but rewarding. Role challenges included the need for quick, accurate assessments and interventions to keep family members safe, informed and supported, while allowing them to witness resuscitation. Key role activities included: being fully present and compassionately attentive to family, continuously assessing family members, coordinating the first moments when family presence during resuscitation commences, explaining in simple, tailored terms the resuscitation activities, and supporting the family emotionally and psychologically through a variety of strategies. Nurses noted the high variability in how families respond and the complexity of simultaneously performing the multi-faceted role activities.

Relevance to clinical practice: To effectively support the growing global trend of family presence during resuscitation, nurses need the knowledge this study provides about how to fulfil the family support person role. Identifying the role activities may facilitate development of clinical guidelines and educational preparation for the role. Nurses can refine the many skills this role requires, building their competence and confidence, to increase opportunities for family members to experience family presence during resuscitation in a safe, and high-quality manner.

Keywords: critical care nursing; family presence during resuscitation; family support person; family-witnessed resuscitation.