NEJM Catal Innov Care Deliv
August 2022
More than 5 million patients are admitted to ICUs each year in the United States alone. ICUs are stressful environments given the patients' medical severity, family emotional experience, and staff burnout. However, psychosocial services are rarely offered and sustained in these settings.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFThe COVID-19 pandemic has placed extraordinary stress on frontline healthcare providers as they encounter significant challenges and risks while caring for patients at the bedside. This study used qualitative research methods to explore nurses and respiratory therapists' experiences providing direct care to COVID-19 patients during the first surge of the pandemic at a large academic medical center in the Northeastern United States. The purpose of this study was to explore their experiences as related to changes in staffing models and to consider needs for additional support.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEfforts to improve health equity may be advanced by understanding health care providers' perceptions of the causes of health inequalities. Drawing on data from in-depth interviews with nurses and registered respiratory therapists (RRTs) who served on intensive care units (ICUs) during the first surge of the pandemic, this paper examines how frontline providers perceive and attribute the unequal impacts of COVID-19. It shows that nurses and RRTs quickly perceived the pandemic's disproportionate burden on Black and Latinx individuals and families.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFBackground: Critical illness is distressing for families, and often results in negative effects on family health that influence a family's ability to support their critically ill family member. Although recent attention has been directed at improving care and outcomes for families of critically ill patients, the manner in which nurses engage with families is not fully understood.
Objectives: To describe nurses' perceptions and practices of family engagement in adult intensive care units from a global perspective.
Aims: To understand how nurses experience providing care for patients hospitalized with COVID-19 in intensive care units.
Background: As hospitals adjust staffing patterns to meet the demands of the pandemic, nurses have direct physical contact with ill patients, placing themselves and their families at physical and emotional risk.
Methods: From June to August 2020, semi-structured interviews were conducted.