Measuring communication quality in the Neonatal Intensive Care Unit.

Area of Science:

• Neonatal intensive care
• Pediatric palliative care
• Healthcare communication

Background:

• Effective communication between healthcare providers and parents of critically ill neonates is vital but not well understood.
• Improving communication is a priority in pediatric palliative care, yet measuring relevant outcomes remains a challenge.
• Specifically, assessing communication quality in neonatology is problematic and understudied.

Purpose of the Study:

• To review existing validated instruments for measuring communication quality in adult patients and surrogates.
• To identify the gap in validated measures for communication quality specifically within the neonatal intensive care unit (NICU) setting.
• To highlight the critical need for further research and development in this area.

Main Methods:

• Conducted a focused literature review using PubMed.
• Searched the Palliative Care Research Cooperative (PCRC) instrument library.
• Included studies measuring communication quality and/or satisfaction with communication.

Main Results:

• Identified five validated instruments measuring communication quality/satisfaction in adult patients or surrogates.
• PubMed search yielded 249 unique results, with only two meeting inclusion criteria.
• No comprehensive overview of existing communication quality measures in the NICU was found.

Conclusions:

• Development and rigorous testing of a validated, comprehensive measure of communication quality for neonates is essential.
• Without such a measure, advancing prognostic communication quality for parents of critically ill infants will be difficult.
• This review underscores the need for dedicated research into NICU communication assessment tools.