The Impact of Patient's Families Supportive Presence on the Attitudes of Intensive Care Unit Nurses in this Unit

Despite the proven positive impact s of family presence on the patients in the intensive care units (ICU)، family presence in the ICU was limited due to concerns about patient safety and increase of nosocomial infection. Correcting the ICU nurses’ attitudes can be supportive for the patient''s family and provide positive effects. So، this study aimed to investigate the impact of patient’s family presence on the attitudes of ICU nurses in this unit. This quasi- experimental study was conducted between March 2010 to July 2011 on 45 nurses working in neurology ICUs of Mashhad Shahid Kamyab Hospital. The questionnaire consisting of 14 questions and 3 subsets based on the Likert scale and was used to evaluate the attitudes of nurses about family presence in the ICU before and after the intervention. Intervention included the presence of patient’s family twice a day. The results were analyzed with Paired t-test and Friedman test. Paired t -test results indicated that there was no statistically significant difference between the attitudes of nurses before and after the intervention (p=0. 810). There was a significant difference between changes in the nurses’ attitude and place of work (p=0. 008). The Friedman test showed significant differences between changes of the average scores of each of the 14 questions after the study (p=0. 013). This study shows that nurses are aware of the benefits of patient’s families supportive presence in the ICU، but due to concerns about the quality of patient care، providing care in the presence of family and cultural barriers in families about understanding the nature of care، they do not show a positive attitude towards it.