Facilitated family presence at resuscitation: effectiveness of a nursing student toolkit

Facilitated family presence at resuscitation is endorsed by multiple nursing and specialty practice organizations. Implementation of this practice is not universal so there is a need to increase familiarity and competence with facilitated family presence at resuscitation during this significant life event. One strategy to promote this practice is to use a nursing student toolkit for pre-licensure and graduate nursing students. The toolkit includes short video simulations of facilitated family presence at resuscitation, a PowerPoint presentation of evidence-based practice, and questions to facilitate guided discussion.

This study tested the effectiveness of this toolkit in increasing nursing students' knowledge, perceptions, and confidence in facilitated family presence at resuscitation. Nursing students from five universities in the United States completed the Family Presence Risk-Benefit Scale, Family Presence Self-Confidence Scale, and a knowledge test before and after the intervention.

Implementing the facilitated family presence at resuscitation toolkit significantly increased nursing students' knowledge, perceptions, and confidence related to facilitated family presence at resuscitation (p<.001). The effect size was large for knowledge (d=.90) and perceptions (d=1.04) and moderate for confidence (d=.51).

The facilitated family presence at resuscitation toolkit used in this study had a positive impact on students' knowledge, perception of benefits and risks, and self-confidence in facilitated family presence at resuscitation. The toolkit provides students a structured opportunity to consider the presence of family members at resuscitation prior to encountering this situation in clinical practice.