Current practices related to family presence during acute deterioration in adult emergency department patients.

Aims And Objectives: To explore the characteristics of and interactions between clinicians, patients and family members during management of the deteriorating adult patient in the emergency department.

Background: Previous research into family presence during resuscitation has identified many positive outcomes when families are included. However, over the last three decades the epidemiology of acute clinical deterioration has changed, with a decrease in in-hospital cardiac arrests and an increase in acute clinical deterioration.

Family presence during management of acute deterioration: Clinician attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of current practices.

Background: The nature of acute clinical deterioration has changed over the last three decades with a decrease in in-hospital cardiac arrests and an increase in acute clinical deterioration. Despite this change, research related to family presence continues to focus on care during resuscitation rather than during acute deterioration.

Aim: To explore healthcare clinician attitudes, beliefs and perceptions of current practices surrounding family presence during episodes of acute deterioration in adult Emergency Department patients.

Development, reliability and validity of a tool, to measure emergency department clinicians' attitudes towards family presence (FP) during acute deterioration in adult patients.

Despite many studies of family presence during resuscitation, no validated tool exploring the attitudes and beliefs of healthcare staff towards family presence has been published. The aim of this paper is to describe the development of a tool to accurately measure the attitudes and beliefs of emergency department staff towards family presence in the deteriorating adult patient, present the results of validity and reliability testing, and present the final validated tool. Twenty-nine items were developed, informed by themes from the literature and unvalidated published tools related to family presence during resuscitation.