Family satisfaction with care in the intensive care unit: Results of a multiple center study in Selected Military Hospitals

Family satisfaction is the reflection of needs and expectations made by family members of the patient admitted in ICU by the individuals who take care after the professional health. Measuring the satisfaction levels of family members of the patients admitted، is in a sense، one of the components of measuring the quality of taking care after patients and will improve the analysis of the existing situation and basic measures in promoting this dimension of taking care after the patients. The present article is the result of a descriptive study in the intensive care units in 5 selected military hospitals in Tehran. In this research، a 30-item questionnaire in Persian on satisfaction of family members of patients admitted in intensive care units with three sub-scales of satisfaction of the performance of treatment staffs، comfort and decision making was used. For description of data were used mean، variance، standard deviation and frequency that calculated with SPSS16. The average age of the participating individuals was 36/13± 10/7. Responding rate was 82%. The most scores of satisfaction was related to the item of «Enough time to think about the information provided about the patient’s with an average and standard deviation 69/66±46/04، General satisfaction with the experience in ICU”، (62/75±22/29) and the least scores of satisfactions was related to the “rate of participation in decision making trend:” (41/75 ± 30/88)، and “participation in the trend of care after the patient” (42/91±30/83). General satisfaction with decision making، care and satisfaction with the intensive care units were determined in three items. The average and standard deviations of the scores of these items were 62/75± 22/، 57/58± 24/16، 2953/83 ± 24/49. Discussion and Family satisfaction is one of the important tools to study the quality of care in the intensive care units. The least score gained in satisfaction was related to the participation in the trend of care after the patient، the rate of participation in the decision making trend. This shows the necessity of proper intervention in order to promote the quality of services in ICU.