"Are you listening?": Experiences shared online by family caregivers of patients in the palliative phase during the Covid-19-pandemic.

Objectives: In palliative care, it is important for family caregivers to spend time with and care for the patient, and to receive (in)formal support. These elements were compromised during the Covid-19-pandemic. This study investigates what family caregivers of non-Covid-19-patients in the palliative phase shared online during the first wave of the pandemic, and what their communicative intentions were with posting online.

Diversity of Parent Emotions and Physician Responses During End-of-Life Conversations.

Background And Objectives: To provide support to parents of critically ill children, it is important that physicians adequately respond to parents' emotions. In this study, we investigated emotions expressed by parents, physicians' responses to these expressions, and parents' emotions after the physicians' responses in conversations in which crucial decisions regarding the child's life-sustaining treatment had to be made.

Methods: Forty-nine audio-recorded conversations between parents of 12 critically ill children and physicians working in the neonatal and pediatric intensive care units of 3 Dutch university medical centers were coded and analyzed by using a qualitative inductive approach.

Argumentation in end-of-life conversations with families in Dutch intensive care units: a qualitative observational study.

Purpose: In intensive care units (ICUs), decisions about the continuation or discontinuation of life-sustaining treatment (LST) are made on a daily basis. Professional guidelines recommend an open exchange of standpoints and underlying arguments between doctors and families to arrive at the most appropriate decision. Yet, it is still largely unknown how doctors and families argue in real-life conversations.

How doctors manage conflicts with families of critically ill patients during conversations about end-of-life decisions in neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care.

Purpose: Intensive care is a stressful environment in which team-family conflicts commonly occur. If managed poorly, conflicts can have negative effects on all parties involved. Previous studies mainly investigated these conflicts and their management in a retrospective way.

How Physicians Discuss Uncertainty With Parents in Intensive Care Units.

Background And Objectives: Physicians and parents of critically ill neonates and children receiving intensive care have to make decisions on the child's behalf. Throughout the child's illness and treatment trajectory, adequately discussing uncertainties with parents is pivotal because this enhances the quality of the decision-making process and may positively affect the child's and parents' well-being. We investigated how physicians discuss uncertainty with parents and how this discussion evolves over time during the trajectory.

How doctors actually (do not) involve families in decisions to continue or discontinue life-sustaining treatment in neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care: A qualitative study.

Background: Intensive care doctors have to find the right balance between sharing crucial decisions with families of patients on the one hand and not overburdening them on the other hand. This requires a tailored approach instead of a model based approach.

Aim: To explore doctors involve families in the decision-making process regarding life-sustaining treatment on the neonatal, pediatric, and adult intensive care.