Exploring Video Calls and PTSD Symptoms in Family Members of Severe COVID-19 Patients Post-ICU Discharge: A Mixed-Methods Study.
Ayako Noguchi, Nobuyuki Nosaka, Akiko Mizoe and 2 others
PMID 40642908WHAT IT FOUND
Video calls while a patient was in the ICU did not reduce PTSD symptoms in family members.
Families who had calls wrote more about doctors and nurses, but symptom rates did not differ.
Key findings
01PTSD symptoms were identified in 21% of family members who experienced video calls and 18% of those who did not, and video calls were not significantly associated with symptoms after adjustment.
02Free-text responses from video-call participants used person-related words such as doctor and nurse, but the authors interpret these patterns descriptively rather than causally.
03The video-call group had patients with longer ICU stays, more mechanical ventilation, more ECMO use and higher ICU mortality.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
The study had no formal sample size calculation and analysed only 68 family members, with 28 in the video-call group. 97 family members gave verbal consent, but only 68 questionnaires were returned. Families were not randomised to video calls, and the video-call group had patients with longer ICU stays, more mechanical ventilation, more ECMO use and higher ICU mortality, so the comparison was confounded. PTSD symptoms were screened with the IES-R, not confirmed by a structured interview. Only one family member per patient was surveyed, and the most distressed family members may have been harder to reach; one family returned consent but did not complete the questionnaire. Video calls were not protocolised; nurse involvement varied, nurses had not received specific communication training, and the quality of each call was not measured. The study was single-centre in Japan, so generalisability to other ICU settings is limited. The qualitative analysis used text mining of open-ended communication answers, so the word patterns are descriptive and do not prove causation.
Declared interests
One author received a research grant from Sharp Corporation specifically for this study. The other authors declared no conflicts of interest. Sharp Corporation is named as the funder.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that ICU video calls prevent PTSD symptoms in families. The primary symptom comparison was not significant, and the descriptive word patterns about doctors and nurses are not evidence of an effect.