TY - JOUR
T1 - Developing and testing a comprehensive tool to assess family meetings
T2 - Empirical distinctions between high- and low-quality meetings
AU - Bruce, Courtenay R.
AU - Newell, Alana D
AU - Brewer, Jonathan H
AU - Timme, Divina O
AU - Cherry, Evan
AU - Moore, Justine
AU - Carrettin, Jennifer
AU - Landeck, Emily
AU - Axline, Rebecca
AU - Millette, Allison
AU - Taylor, Ruth
AU - Downey, Andrea
AU - Uddin, Faisal
AU - Gotur, Deepa
AU - Masud, Faisal
AU - Zhukovsky, Donna S
N1 - Copyright © 2017 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.
PY - 2017/7/28
Y1 - 2017/7/28
N2 - BACKGROUND: The heterogeneity with regard to findings on family meetings (or conferences) suggests a need to better understand factors that influence family meetings. While earlier studies have explored frequency or timing of family meetings, little is known about how factors (such as what is said during meetings, how it is said, and by whom) influence family meeting quality.OBJECTIVES: (1) To develop an evaluation tool to assess family meetings (Phase 1); (2) to identify factors that influence meeting quality by evaluating 34 family meetings (Phase 2).MATERIALS AND METHODS: For Phase 1, methods included developing a framework, cognitive testing, and finalizing the evaluation tool. The tool consisted of Facilitator Characteristics (i.e., gender, experience, and specialty of the person leading the meeting), and 22 items across 6 Meeting Elements (i.e., Introductions, Information Exchanges, Decisions, Closings, Communication Styles, and Emotional Support) and sub-elements. For Phase 2, methods included training evaluators, assessing family meetings, and analyzing data. We used Spearman's rank-order correlations to calculate meeting quality. Qualitative techniques were used to analyze free-text.RESULTS: No Facilitator Characteristic had a significant correlation with meeting quality. Sub-elements related to communication style and emotional support most strongly correlated with high-quality family meetings, as well as whether "next steps" were outlined (89.66%) and whether "family understanding" was elicited (86.21%). We also found a significant and strong positive association between overall proportion scores and evaluators' ratings (rs=0.731, p<0.001).CONCLUSIONS: We filled a gap by developing an evaluation tool to assess family meetings, and we identified how what is said during meetings impacts quality.
AB - BACKGROUND: The heterogeneity with regard to findings on family meetings (or conferences) suggests a need to better understand factors that influence family meetings. While earlier studies have explored frequency or timing of family meetings, little is known about how factors (such as what is said during meetings, how it is said, and by whom) influence family meeting quality.OBJECTIVES: (1) To develop an evaluation tool to assess family meetings (Phase 1); (2) to identify factors that influence meeting quality by evaluating 34 family meetings (Phase 2).MATERIALS AND METHODS: For Phase 1, methods included developing a framework, cognitive testing, and finalizing the evaluation tool. The tool consisted of Facilitator Characteristics (i.e., gender, experience, and specialty of the person leading the meeting), and 22 items across 6 Meeting Elements (i.e., Introductions, Information Exchanges, Decisions, Closings, Communication Styles, and Emotional Support) and sub-elements. For Phase 2, methods included training evaluators, assessing family meetings, and analyzing data. We used Spearman's rank-order correlations to calculate meeting quality. Qualitative techniques were used to analyze free-text.RESULTS: No Facilitator Characteristic had a significant correlation with meeting quality. Sub-elements related to communication style and emotional support most strongly correlated with high-quality family meetings, as well as whether "next steps" were outlined (89.66%) and whether "family understanding" was elicited (86.21%). We also found a significant and strong positive association between overall proportion scores and evaluators' ratings (rs=0.731, p<0.001).CONCLUSIONS: We filled a gap by developing an evaluation tool to assess family meetings, and we identified how what is said during meetings impacts quality.
KW - Journal Article
U2 - 10.1016/j.jcrc.2017.07.040
DO - 10.1016/j.jcrc.2017.07.040
M3 - Article
C2 - 28780489
SN - 0883-9441
VL - 42
SP - 223
EP - 230
JO - Journal of Critical Care
JF - Journal of Critical Care
ER -