THE QUALITY OF COMMUNICATION BETWEEN THE TREATMENT STAFF AND THE FAMILIES OF PATIENTS ADMITTED TO THE INTENSIVE CARE UNIT: A SYSTEMATIC REVIEW

Following the hospitalization of a patient in intensive care unit, his/her family is exposed to a series of physical, psychological, social and spiritual reactions. At this stage, one of the factors that help families to deal with the crisis is communication with staff working in critical care units. Therefore, this study was conducted aimed investigating the quality of communication between the staff and the families of patients admitted to the intensive care units.

This review study was conducted in 2022 through searching related articles in scientific databases including Science Direct, Web of Science, PubMed, Irandoc, Magiran, SID. All articles in Persian and English that were published during 2005-2022, reviewed. After screening process, fourteen articles were analyzed.

According to the studies, the quality of communication between patients' families and ICU staff has been reported to be weak and undesirable. Several factors that have a role in this condition dividing in personal and occupational-environmental factors and cause weakness of communication.

All ICU staff including doctors and nurses, as the main members of medical team, should pay special attention to families as effective elements of patients’ treatment process. They must try to implement some approaches such as family-centered care and try to boost quality of communication that is considered as the core element of patients’ families support.