Main information requests of family members of patients in Intensive Care Units

To compile an inventory of information requests prioritized by the family members, to find out which professionals them consider able to respond these requests, and to explore the differences in perception between family members and professionals.

Qualitative analysis of content validation and descriptive cross-sectional study.

41 Spanish ICU.

Relatives, physicians and nurses of critical patients.

From an initial list of questions extracted from literature review, physicians, nurses, and relatives of critical patients incorporated issues that they considered not included. After analyzing content validity, a new list was obtained, which was again submitted to the participants' assessment to evaluate the level of importance that they assigned to each question and which professional they considered appropriate to answer it.

most important questions for the relatives: concern about the clinical situation, measures to be taken, prognosis and information. There was a coincidence between relatives and professionals in the priority issues for families. There were significant differences in the importance given to each question: between doctors and relatives (72/82 questions), and between nurses and relatives (66/82 questions) (P<.05). For the relatives, 63% of the questions could be answered by doctors or nurses, 27% preferably by doctors and 10% by nurses.

The most relevant issues for families were prognosis and severity, but also the need for information. Healthcare professionals tend to underestimate the importance of many of the questions that concern families. Relatives feel that most of their concerns can be resolved either by doctors or nurses.