Current Pediatric Research

Aim: The study is aimed to obtain the opinions and attitudes of healthcare staff towards the presence of family members around their children in the pediatric intensive care units.

Methods: A cross-sectional study has been conducted in the health care centers within Riyadh City, Saudi Arabia. The study included 217 practitioners of pediatric and intensive care units.

Tool: A self-reported questionnaire was used for data collection.

Results: Finding suggested that about 3/4th of the participants (72.4%) agreed that “family presence would positively influence the outcome of their child.” In comparison, 60.4% admitted that it provides them with an improved understanding of complications. Moreover, 48.8% admitted emotional trauma, 47.5% believed that family presence is beneficial to the patient, while 44.7% speculated that it might influence their treatment decision. The participants’ responses differed significantly considering that family presence may cause medicolegal litigation (p<0.001). Also, participants’ responses differed significantly considering that family presence is beneficial to the patient (p=0.001).

Conclusions: The development of written policies and guidelines is essential to help healthcare practitioners, and families decide to be (or not to be) with their children during intensive care procedures.

Author(s): Mosleh Jabari, Fahd Algaeed, Hassan Al-shehri*, Abdullah Alzayed, Abdullah Al-faris, Hamad Algaeed, Norah Almajed, Noura Ababtain, Mohammed Al-Sayed

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