The Effect of Trained Family Presence on Patient\'s Anxiety During Invasive Procedures in the Emergency Department: A Randomized Clinical Trial

Abstract

Introduction: Today, despite of the emphasis on family-based care strategies, there is little understanding of the adult patient's perception of the presence of family members during emergency care and invasive procedures. The aim of this study was to compare the effect of family presence and their training before the presence on the anxiety of patients undergoing invasive nursing procedures in the emergency department. Methods: In this randomized clinical trial, 90 patients undergoing invasive nursing procedures and their family members were selected based on inclusion criteria and allocated randomly in three groups of 30 (with the presence of trained family members, with the presence of untrained family members and without the presence of family members) by minimization method. The data was analyzed by SPSS 16 using Kolmogorov-Smirnov test, Chi-square test, Kruskal Wallis Independent-sample, paired sample t-test, and ANOVA at the significance level of 0.05. Results: The three groups were similar in terms of demographic variables. All three groups had significantly lower anxiety scores in the post-intervention phase than before the intervention (P=0.001). There was no significant difference between the mean and the standard deviation of the patient's anxiety scores before (P=0.131) and after the intervention (P=0.309) in the intergroup comparison. Conclusion: The presence of family members and their training before presence did not reduce the anxiety of patients under nursing invasive procedures. It's necessary that other aspects of family members’ presence during invasive procedures to be considered in future studies.

Keywords

• anxiety
• invasive procedures
• patient-centered care
• family-centered care
• emergency care