Hola a tod@s, my dear friends.

Rather than anything, thanks everybody by the response given to “Human tools”. We knew that is a great film, but with the fire in Networks and more than 2000 visits in the first 24 hours our expectations have been beyond.

Keep helping us do this trending Topic in your day to day: BE SWEET, BE HUMAN.

And following this way, today we want to share an article recently published in the advance online of the Revista de Calidad Asistencial (Quality of Care Journal) by one of the components of the IC-HU Research Project, Dra. Ángela Alonso, and her team from the ICU of the Hospital Universitario de Fuenlabrada.



The authors raised as target to know the expectations, needs and experiences of families in relation to the information that we give them and the degree of understanding, to find that magic receipt that will make us improve in this difficult task.
They carried out a qualitative research through ten semi-structured interviews to family members of critical patients, finding that there are differences between what they expect from the information and what we give them.

In the analysis, they highlight several points:

1. The subjective position of the family: waiting, anticipated grief and anguish.

2. What represents the ICU for family.

3. The perceived care.

4. The four phases of the information: first information and first visit; following information and following visits, information from the withdrawal of support measures and the discharge information.

The article includes a table with recommendations on aspects unwanted and undesirable to inform family members, which it is for us an indispensable guide.

We have to understand that families are also our patients; we need to move them from the passive state of “waiting” and paternalism; the information we give them is vital and fundamental how we inform; we have to be truthful, honest, sincere, compassionate, and caring; they require a custom time and information needs vary along the income.

ICUs of the 21st century want to put people at the centre. This is an excellent way.

Congratulations colleagues! And thank you so much.
Gabi