American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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Observational Study
Grief Reactions of Potential Organ Donors' Bereaved Relatives: An Observational Study.
Most family members of potential organ donors experience the death of their relative in an intensive care unit. While under an emotional burden, bereaved relatives must make a decision that will affect the life of other patients. A better understanding of grief within the context of organ donation will help intensive care unit staff better support families during this process. ⋯ Observation and analysis of the factors studied may help hospital staff members anticipate bereaved relatives' emotional reactions and provide better support during the grieving process, increasing family members' well-being and facilitating a better-informed organ donation decision.
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Outcomes in pediatric critical care research are typically selected by the researcher. ⋯ Functioning and quality of life are key patient-centered outcomes during recovery from critical illness. These are not well captured by end points typically used in PICU studies. These results justify the importance of patient- and family-centered outcomes in PICU research and a need to determine how these outcomes can be comprehensively measured.
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Observational Study
Feasibility of Videophone-Assisted Neuropsychological Testing For Intensive Care Unit Survivors.
Most hospitals lack neuropsychologists, and this lack has hampered the conduct of large-scale, multicenter clinical trials to evaluate the effect of interventions on long-term cognition in patients in intensive care units (ICUs). ⋯ Videophone-assisted neuropsychological testing is feasible for evaluating cognition in multicenter studies of ICU patients. Feedback provided will be used to refine this telemedicine approach to neuropsychological testing.