Australian Emergency Department health professionals' reasons to invite or not invite Family Witnessed Resuscitation: a qualitative perspective.

BACKGROUND: Debate continues regarding the effectiveness of Family Witnessed Resuscitation and little is known about the reasons why staff invite family presence. AIM: Explore why health professionals invite or not invite Family Witnessed Resuscitation. DESIGN: Descriptive qualitative study. METHOD: Three open-ended questions enabled 114 clinicians to describe why they would or would not invite family presence. Data were analysed using qualitative data analysis. RESULTS: Four themes representing factors that influenced staff decision to invite or not invite Family Witnessed Resuscitation were identified: motivating factors, personal choice, staff judgment, and organisational factors. Motivating factors described reasons to invite family presence, and staff and organisational factors were reasons to not invite family presence. CONCLUSION: Family presence can be beneficial for staff and family and is likely to be motivated by family-specific factors where this choice is appropriate for all stakeholders. Participants described factors that can impact on the appropriateness of inviting family presence and these need to be considered before an invitation is extended. RELEVANCE TO PRACTICE: To support all parties throughout the process it is imperative that a skilled support person be available to the family and that written policies and guidelines be available for staff.

Assessing health professionals' perceptions of family presence during resuscitation: a replication study.

BACKGROUND: Family witnessed resuscitation is the practice of enabling patients' family members to be present during resuscitation. Research is inconsistent as to the effectiveness or usefulness of this initiative. AIM: To evaluate the performance of two scales that assess perceptions of family witnessed resuscitation among a sample of health professionals, in an Australian non-teaching hospital, and explore differences in perceptions according to sociodemographic characteristics and previous experience. DESIGN: Descriptive, replication study, using a cross-sectional survey. METHOD: An anonymous survey was distributed to 221 emergency department clinicians. Sociodemographic characteristics and perceptions of family witnessed resuscitation using the Family Presence Risk-Benefit and Family Presence Self-confidence Scales were assessed. Exploratory factor analysis was used to evaluate the performance of the scales. RESULTS: One hundred and fourteen doctors and nurses returned the survey (response rate of 51.6%). Both Scales were found to have a single factor structure and a high level of internal consistency. Approximately two-thirds of participants considered that family presence was a right of patients and families, and almost a quarter of respondents had invited family presence during resuscitation on more than five occasions. We found no significant differences in scale scores between doctors and nurses. CONCLUSION: Our findings confirm the validity of the Family Presence Risk-Benefit and Family Presence Self-Confidence Scales in the Australian context, and highlight the need to support clinicians in the provision of family witnessed resuscitation to all families.