Obtaining feedback from patients and their family in the emergency department.

Obtaining feedback from the patient and their family members regarding their experience of the care they received in the emergency department is important. This provides an extremely valuable opportunity for healthcare professionals to assess the quality of care and serves to highlight any areas of weakness or strength in the care experience. Through a synthesis of available literature, this article describes the challenges in measuring such an experience especially in emergency departments in Africa, and outlines tools that are currently available in literature to measure the patient and family experience and or satisfaction. Implementation considerations are outlined in order to provide recommendations for emergency department healthcare professionals wanting to undertake such assessments.

Tools to measure families experience in the emergency department: A scoping review.

The aim of this review was to map literature on available tools measuring families experience in the emergency department and to identify domains being measured in the tools. A two-stage screening process was employed to determine eligibility of articles. Articles written in English language were retrieved, and data extracted on design, setting, sample and sampling, tool description and details, as well as data collection point used. From 165 articles initially screened, 8 articles were finally included and three tools identified namely: Critical Care Family Needs Inventory, Critical Care Family Needs Inventory-Emergency Department and one researcher-developed questionnaire. The domains measured, which were common to all tools, were those of communication, comfort, and support. Measuring families experience in the ED appears limited and this might be related to the difficulty around conducting research in an ED environment. This review provides important information for hospitals regarding how they engage with families and how they can influence current practice standards and processes, thus assuring improved quality of care.

Measuring patient experience in the emergency department: A scoping review.

INTRODUCTION: Measuring patients' experience in the emergency department can be an avenue through which the patients are able to evaluate their own care experience, and this may provide guidance for healthcare professionals in addressing quality improvement. This scoping review aimed to identify and examine existing tools that measure patients' experience in the emergency department. METHODS: A scoping review was carried out to synthesize evidence from a range of studies in order to describe the characteristics of each study and their sample, and to describe the tools used to measure patients' experience in the emergency department. RESULTS: Out of the 308 articles retrieved, results of the first and second level screening yielded 10 articles for inclusion using 9 different experience tools/questionnaire in the emergency department. CONCLUSION: Measuring patients' experience in the emergency department is a global concern, however research conducted in low-to-middle-income countries is very limited and such research in Africa appears to be absent. Getting consumers of care to evaluate their experience may help healthcare professionals to identify discrepancies in care and plan possible strategies to address them.

Family caregiver's experiences of providing care to patients with End-Stage Renal Disease in South-West Nigeria.

AIMS AND OBJECTIVES: To describe the experiences of family caregivers providing care for patients living with End-Stage Renal Disease in Nigeria BACKGROUND: Family caregiving is where an unpaid volunteer, usually a close family member, attends to the needs of a loved one with a chronic, disabling illness within the home. Much research has been conducted in the area of family caregiving in high-income countries. However, the same cannot be said for many of the low-resource, multicultural African countries. DESIGN: Qualitative descriptive study. METHOD: This qualitative descriptive study used manifest content analysis to analyse data from semi-structured, individual interviews, with 15 purposively selected family caregivers. Two tertiary institutions providing renal care in South-Western Nigeria: the research setting for this study. RESULT: Five categories were identified, and these included disconnectedness with self and others, never-ending burden, 'a fool being tossed around', obligation to care and promoting a closer relationship. CONCLUSION: Experiences associated with the caregiving of patients diagnosed with End-Stage Renal Disease evoked a number of emotions from the family caregivers, and the study revealed that caregiving imposed some burdens that are specific to low-resource countries on participants. RELEVANCE TO CLINICAL PRACTICE: Nurses need to engage family caregivers on disease-specific teachings that might promote understanding of the disease process and role expectation. Family caregivers may benefit from social support services.