Engaging family members in nutrition care during recovery from critical illness

The delivery of high-quality personalized nutrition care both during ICU and throughout post-ICU recovery is limited by multifactorial barriers. As families are often a present and consistent resource, family engagement may help to optimize nutrition support during hospitalization and after recovery from critical illness. In this review, we summarize the evidence base for family engagement in nutrition care and hypothesize future roles families may play, throughout the critical illness recovery trajectory.

Family members may be best placed to convey patients' personal nutritional preferences, and premorbid nutrition intake and status, as well as promote and minimize barriers to nutrition intake. The engagement of families in nutrition care is an emerging concept, and as such, few studies have explored the role of family engagement in the delivery of nutritional care. Those that do have shown high levels of family engagement and feasibility but have not yet translated to improved clinical and patient-related outcomes.

Further research should identify how and where families may best engage to support, or advocate for, improved nutrition care.