Family members’ views, opinions, and beliefs about witnessed resuscitation

A comprehensive search of Medline, Cinahl, Sociofile and Psychinfo was performed. The key words used were “rela-tives”, “family”, “family presence”, “family witnessing”, “staff attitudes”, “critical care”, “critical care settings”, “cardiopulmonary resuscitation”, “family centred care” and “holistic care”. The search for articles was conducted in three stages. Firstly, I searched throughout the above electronic data bases for the main terms and concepts of the study. Secondly, hand searching by reviewing the bibliographies of published studies was also used to locate relevant literature. This stage includes searching for related books, unpublished theses, and other significant studies such as studies about end-of-life care. Specific criteria were considered regarding studies about family witnessed resuscitation (FWR). Firstly, only English articles were selected for reviewing. Secondly, research evidences on adult patients were preferred. Thirdly, the search on FWR includes the studies that were conducted after 1985. Fourthly, all studies about families’ perceptions, patients’ beliefs, and staff attitudes regarding FWR were selected. Fifty five articles were finally identified for review. All of these articles are published studies. The literature date ranged from 1987 to 2009. Reviewing several essays and researchers’ views in this field was also done. It was found that eleven (20%) of the studies evaluated only family members. Twenty seven (49%) studies evaluated only health staff. Three studies were identified for evaluating only the perceptions of patients. Both family members and health staff were assessed in three studies. Patients, families, and health staff were investigated in only one study. Two studies were conducted among general patients and family members without specification of their cases. One study represented a report of nine years of experience in hospital, without specifying the characteristics of the participants.