ABSTRACT
The concern over family witnessed cardiopulmonary resuscitation [CPR] has been a frequent topic of debate in many countries. The Emergency Nurses Association [ENA] has formally resolved that family presence [FP] during resuscitation is the right of the patient and is beneficial for both patients and family members. This descriptive study was designed to identify believes and attitude of nurses working in critical care units toward family presence during resuscitation and to examine factors influencing them believes and attitudes. To achieve the research objectives two research questions were addressed. First: What are the critical care nurses' believes and attitude toward FP during resuscitation? Second: What are the factors that influence critical care nurses' believes and attitudes toward FP during CPR? The studied sample included 208 nurses working in critical care units in three hospitals at Assiut .A self-administered questionnaire have been administered to those nurses. All participants hold either Diplomas or Bachelor's degree [Bsc] in nursing with working experience less than five years. The most of participants believes that family should not be allowed to he present during CPR. Two thirds of the nurses disagreement that family presence is a patient right. As regard nurses attitudes toward family presence during CPR 64% of them stated that family presence increases the Stress level for CPR team members, more than half of nurses mentioned that family presence interferes with resuscitation effort and lead to increased malpractice Suits. Study findings concluded that the majority of nurses working in critical care units under study do not support family presence during resuscitation attempt; logistic regression analysis indicated that those nurses who support family presence correlated strongly with years of experience and type of institution but was not predicted by age, gender, level of education. Further studies are recommended to investigate attitudes on a more representative sample and in a wider geographical area; efforts to change their attitudes should aim at setting up a mechanism that facilitates the practice and at relieving their concerns on legal liability. Experimental and qualitative methods are especially recommended to investigate the effect of family presence during resuscitation on patients, families, nurses and physicians, and other multidisciplinary staff member