Family Health Conversations-A Short-Term Supportive Intervention to Improve Family Well-Being, Functioning, and Involvement in Care After Open-Heart Surgery: A Multicenter, Randomized, Parallel-Group Superiority Trial.
Anna Drakenberg, Daniel R Smith, Ann-Sofie Sundqvist and 2 others
PMID 42359901WHAT IT FOUND
Nurse-led video family conversations added to usual care did not improve family well-being at 90 days after open-heart surgery.
Some health-related quality of life subscales favoured intervention, but the main outcome was null.
Key findings
01Family health conversations added to usual care did not improve the primary family well-being outcome at 90 days.
02Compared with usual care alone, usual care plus nurse-led video family conversations and a closing letter was superior on some RAND-36 subscales at 90 days.
03The Family Involvement in Care Questionnaire showed no clinically relevant difference between usual care alone and the intervention group.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Participants and the nurse knew allocation. About 80% external dropout limits generalizability and may have reduced the ability to detect differences. The sample was not powered for gender subgroup analysis, and the expected effect size was large, so a true effect may have been missed. Baseline groups differed in patient education and proportion of adult children. Family involvement results had low complete-case response and psychometric limitations, so they cannot be interpreted reliably. The intervention was delivered by one nurse, which may limit transferability to usual clinical teams.
Declared interests
No potential conflicts of interest were declared. Funding came from the Research Committee at Region Örebro County, ALF funding Region Örebro County, and the Regional Research Council Mid-Sweden.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that family health conversations improve family well-being after open-heart surgery. The primary outcome was not statistically significant, and the positive RAND-36 subscale findings were secondary. The trial also had approximately 80% external dropout and no blinding.