Poster Presentation

Monday, November 5, 2007
10:30 AM - 11:45 AM

Monday, November 5, 2007
1:45 PM - 3:00 PM
This presentation is part of : Rising Stars Posters
Understanding the Relationship Between Spirituality and the Support for Family Presence by Health Care Professionals During Adult Invasiv Procedures and Resuscitative Efforts
Nancy C. Baumhover, RN, MSN, CCRN, NE, USA and Linda Hughes, RN, PhD, CCRN, School of Nursing, Nebraska Methodist College, Omaha, NE, USA.
Learning Objective #1: The learner will be more knowledgeable about study findings and existing literature regarding family presence during adult invasive procedures and resuscitative efforts.
Learning Objective #2: The learner will be able to describe the relationship between spirituality and the support for family presence during adult procedures by health care professionals.

Family presence is defined by the Emergency Nurses Association in their revised Position Statement (2005, October) as “the presence of family in the patient care area, in a location that affords visual or physical contact with the patient during invasive procedures or resuscitation events.” Only 5% of critical care areas in United States hospitals have a formal written policy regarding family presence (MacLean et al., 2003) despite professional organization recommendations.  The purpose of this exploratory quantitative correlational study was to determine the relationship between spirituality and the support for family presence by health care professionals during adult invasive procedures and resuscitative efforts. The participants were physicians, physician assistants, and nurses who work in the emergency department, intensive care unit, or cardiovascular intensive care unit in the Southwestern United States. This study utilized Dr. Judy Howden’s Spirituality Assessment Scale (SAS) and the researcher developed study questionnaire for its instrumentation.  Pearson’s correlation was set at a significance of p £.05 to analyze this study’s four research questions. Descriptive statistics was used to measure specific questions on the researcher developed study questionnaire. This study was the first correlational study conducted that determined a significant positive relationship (r = .235, p=.05) between spirituality and support for family presence by health care professionals during resuscitative efforts. A significant negative correlation (r = -.266, p=.01) was found between the support for family presence and age of the health care professional during adult resuscitative efforts. However, no significant correlations were found between any study variables and adult invasive procedures.  This study contributed to the overall body of knowledge related to the concept of family presence and heightened an awareness regarding family presence during adult invasive procedures and resuscitation in health professionals.