Family Meetings in the Intensive Care Unit During the Coronavirus Disease 2019 Pandemic.
Gina M Piscitello, Corinna M Fukushima, Anna K Saulitis and 4 others
PMID 33207937WHAT IT FOUND
In ICU patients presumed unable to make decisions, 59% of documented family meetings were telephone calls.
Goals-of-care discussions occurred in 36%, often late, and bedside nurses were included in 9% of them.
Key findings
01Most documented family meetings were by telephone, with video and in-person meetings less common.
02Goals-of-care discussions occurred in 36% of meetings, and the first documented goals-of-care meeting averaged 11.4 days from admission.
03Bedside nurses were included in 9% of goals-of-care meetings but 28% of meetings without goals-of-care discussion.
STILL TO COME
How it was doneWhat they foundWhat it means for RNs
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What it does not show
Only meetings written in the medical record were counted, and the authors expected some daily updates may not have been documented. The mode of 146 of 650 meetings was not documented. The study included only 61 patients from one ICU, and all had a documented request for a video meeting, so it may not represent other ICU populations. It was retrospective, so observed associations may be confounded; illness severity was not measured. The sample size was small.
Declared interests
The authors declared no potential conflicts of interest and received no financial support.
The easy way to misread this
Do not conclude that in-person meetings caused changes in goals of care. The study only compared documented meetings and the authors note in-person meetings may have been chosen when patients were declining.