Facilitating Communication for Family Members of Critically Ill Patients During and Following a Hospital Stay: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Q: What does this research mean for the field?

Involving a communication facilitator during and after an ICU stay does not significantly reduce depressive symptoms in family members of critically ill patients. Novelty: ClaimNovelty.INCREMENTAL. Consensus alignment: ConsensusAlignment.NEUTRAL.

Claire J. Creutzfeldt; L C Brumback; Jennifer Im; Kathryn I. Pollak; Ana Gabriela Vasconcelos; Yilin Song; James Sibley; A Ungar; Gigi Garzio; Patsy D. Treece; Hudson Ld; Rebecca Martini; Sandy Hanson; Nita Khandelwal; Erin Abu‐Rish Blakeney; Nancy Kentish-Barnes; Elie Azoulay; Elizabeth L. Nielsen; Ruth A. Engelberg; J. Randall Curtis

doi:10.1097/ccm.0000000000007268

Key Points

The study aimed to evaluate the impact of a communication facilitator on family depression following ICU stays.
Multicenter randomized controlled trial with 449 ICU patients and 505 family members.
Participants were engaged by trained nurse facilitators during ICU stay and for 3 months postrandomization.
Depression was measured using the Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS) at multiple time points.
Mean HADS-depression scores at 6 months were 5.9 for both control and intervention groups, indicating no significant difference.
Family relationships with healthcare teams improved but only showed statistically small effects (p = 0.0162).
Goal concordance reported by families indicated a favorable trend (p = 0.0504), but these effects were minimal.

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Implication

Randomized trial tested a communication intervention for family members of critically ill patients, showing no reduction in depressive symptoms.

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Cite This Study

Creutzfeldt et al. (2026) studied this question.

synapsesocial.com/papers/6a6300f2395161722cd15a88 https://doi.org/10.1097/ccm.0000000000007268

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Facilitating Communication for Family Members of Critically Ill Patients During and Following a Hospital Stay: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Key Points

No abstract yet

Implication

Discussion

Cite This Study

Facilitating Communication for Family Members of Critically Ill Patients During and Following a Hospital Stay: A Randomized Controlled Trial

Key Points

No abstract yet

Implication

Discussion

Cite This Study

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