Difficulties in Communicating Between Nurses and Relatives of Patients Admitted to Intensive Care Units: A Scoping Review.
Borja de León Oliva, José Ángel Rodríguez Gómez, Natalia Rodríguez Novo
PMID 40801147WHAT IT FOUND
ICU nurses and families often struggle to communicate because of language barriers, technical terms, time pressure, poor doctor-nurse communication and limited training.
Nurse-led family meetings and plain explanations were reported to help families understand and feel less distressed.
Key findings
01Language barriers, technical language and family cultural context were repeatedly described as making nurse-family communication difficult.
02Time pressure, the ICU environment and poor doctor-nurse communication also limited nurses' communication with families.
03Nurse-led family meetings were reported to improve communication and reduce family distress.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
Read the rest of this summary
You get three full summaries a month, free, and we do not ask for a card. Search, the TL;DRs and your library stay unlimited either way.
What it does not show
The search was limited to English and Spanish, so relevant studies in other languages were excluded. The review excluded studies about communication with patients and interprofessional communication, even though these can affect family communication. Terms such as relationship, communication and interaction were sometimes used interchangeably in the literature, so some studies may have been missed. The included studies had varied designs, and a scoping review maps the literature rather than measuring the size of any effect.
Declared interests
The authors declared no conflicts of interest.
The easy way to misread this
Do not read the reported benefits of nurse-led meetings as proof that they work. This scoping review mapped studies and did not test one intervention.