American journal of critical care : an official publication, American Association of Critical-Care Nurses
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Randomized Controlled Trial
Written Communication, Visitation Policies, and Awareness of Medical Issues Among Intensive Care Unit Families.
Open intensive care unit (ICU) visitation policies facilitate communication between clinicians and patients' families. Restrictive visitation policies (eg, during a pandemic) may reduce families' comprehension of information. ⋯ Written communication helps families correctly identify ICU issues. The benefit may be enhanced when families cannot visit the hospital. ClinicalTrials.gov Identifier: NCT03969810.
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Patients with acute respiratory failure have multiple risk factors for disability following their intensive care unit stay. Interventions to facilitate independence at hospital discharge may be more effective if personalized for patient subtypes. ⋯ Acute respiratory failure survivor subtypes identified from clinical data available early in the intensive care unit stay differ in post-intensive care functional disability. Future research should target high-risk patients in early rehabilitation trials in the intensive care unit. Additional investigation of contextual factors and mechanisms of disability is critical to improving quality of life in acute respiratory failure survivors.
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Function-focused care is an approach used to increase physical activity in hospitalized older adults with dementia. ⋯ For hospitalized patients with dementia, the focus of care should be on treating pain and behavioral symptoms, reducing the use of tethers, and improving the quality of care interactions in order to optimize physical resilience, function, and participation in function-focused care.