The impact of the intensive care unit family liaison nurse role on communication during the COVID-19 pandemic: A qualitative descriptive study of healthcare professionals' perspectives

Impact of restricted family presence during the COVID-19 pandemic on critically ill patients, families, and critical care clinicians: a qualitative systematic review

BACKGROUND

We aimed to synthesize the qualitative evidence on the impacts of COVID-19-related restricted family presence policies from the perspective of patients, families, and healthcare professionals from neonatal (NICU), pediatric (PICU), or adult ICUs.

METHODS

We searched MEDLINE, EMBASE, Cochrane Databases of Reviews and Clinical Trials, CINAHL, Scopus, PsycINFO, and Web of Science. Two researchers independently reviewed titles/abstracts and full-text articles for inclusion. Thematic analysis was completed following appraising article quality and assessing confidence in the individual review findings using standardized tools.

RESULTS

We synthesized 54 findings from 184 studies, revealing the impacts of these policies in children and adults on: (1) Family integrated care and patient and family-centered care (e.g., disruption to breastfeeding/kangaroo care, dehumanizing of patients); (2) Patients, families, and healthcare professionals (e.g., negative mental health consequences, moral distress); (3) Support systems (e.g., loss of support from friends/families); and (4) Relationships (e.g., loss of essential bonding with infant, struggle to develop trust). Strategies to mitigate these impacts are reported.

CONCLUSION

This review highlights the multifaceted impacts of restricted visitation policies across distinct care settings and strategies to mitigate the harmful effects of these policies and guide the creation of compassionate family presence policies in future health crises.

REGISTRATION

https://www.crd.york.ac.uk/PROSPERO/display_record.php?RecordID=290263 .

Strategies Used by Nurses to Maintain Person-Family Communication during the COVID-19 Pandemic: A Scoping Review

Background: The COVID-19 pandemic made nurse-patient-family communication more difficult, reducing the understanding of the patient's wishes and current care history. COVID-19 challenged healthcare teams to develop strategies to address these changes and provide more integrated care using the technology at their disposal. So, this study aims to map the strategies used by nurses to maintain communication between the person hospitalized with COVID-19 and the family to understand which communication technologies were most used to maintain communication between the person and the family. Methods: A Scoping Review, according to the recommendations of the Joanna Briggs Institute [JBI] with the Preferred Reporting Items for Scoping Review extension (PRISMA-ScR), research conducted between September 2022 and January 2023. The search was conducted in the databases: Latin American and Caribbean Literature in Health Sciences (LILACS); Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature (CINAHL); Scientific Electronic Library Online (SciELO); Medical Literature Analysis and Retrieval System Online (Medline), using the descriptors: family, communication, nurses, hospitals and COVID-19, and the Boolean operators "AND". The inclusion criteria were: original articles, in Portuguese, English, and Spanish, published from 2020 onwards, with access to full and free text. Results: It was found that most of the communication was unstructured with the family. The technologies most used by nurses were the telephone with video calls from the patients themselves and even from health professionals to maintain communication between the patient and the family. Conclusions: Communication between patients and families became essential during the pandemic, as it became a vital lifeline of human connection that supported the mental health of patients and their families. This study was not registered.