Prioritizing information topics for relatives of critically ill patients: Cross-sectional survey among intensive care unit relatives and professionals

Apatient's admission to an intensive care unit (ICU) has asignificant impact on family members and other relatives. In order for them to be able to cope with such astressful situation, the availability of appropriate understandable and accessible information is crucial. The information asymmetry between relatives and medical professionals may adversely affect satisfaction of relatives and their risk of subsequent anxiety, depression and stress symptoms. The aim of this study was therefore to understand which topics are most important to the relatives of ICU patients and to quantify the perceptions of medical professionals regarding the information needs of relatives. Across-sectional survey was conducted in 2015. The survey had 42questions, such as diagnosis', treatment', comfort', family' and end of life'. In total, the survey was handed out to four different groups. Atotal of 336 persons answered the survey (26relatives, 28ICU physicians, 202 ICU nurses and 80ICU medical professionals in aclosed Facebook (c) group [Facebook, Menlo Park, California, USA]). Relatives ranked the five most important topics as follows: recent events (crisis)', my participation', contamination in hospital', physical pain', and probability'. Several significant differences (p<0.001) were detected, for example for the topics fever, medication, recent events (crisis), appointments, relapse, and investigations. Even the topic with the lowest ranking (religion) had ascore of 3.15 (min. 1.00, max. 5.00) among relatives. The ICU professionals appear to have divergent opinions regarding the most important topics for ICU relatives as compared to relatives themselves.