Nurses' Role in Transitional Care During Intensive Care Unit Family Meetings for Patients With Prolonged Mechanical Ventilation.

This was a secondary analysis of transcripts from a parent trial, so the data were not originally collected to describe nurses' role in transitional care. The final sample was purposively selected because nurses already spoke beyond introductions, so it cannot describe what happens in meetings where nurses are silent or minimally involved. The sample was small: 19 meetings, 19 patients, 19 family members and 12 unique nurses. 68.4% of meetings came from one institution with a nurse coordinator role; nurse coordinators made up 12 of 23 nurse instances, and only 3 were confirmed bedside ICU nurses. Only English meetings were analysed, and the study included 5 hospitals in North Carolina, Pennsylvania and Washington. The analysis focused only on nurses' speech and did not compare meetings without active nurse participation, so it cannot show whether other team members fulfilled similar roles. Transitional care decisions are iterative, but this analysis looked at single meetings rather than longitudinal care.

Do not conclude that nurse speech in ICU family meetings improves patient or family transitional care outcomes. This study described 19 meetings selected for active nurse speech, where 12 of 23 nurse instances were nurse coordinators, and did not test effectiveness or compare outcomes.