title: Towards expanding the acute care team: Learning how to involve families in care processes.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Effective teamwork is known to be important to improving health care outcomes. Current research often highlights teamwork among health care professionals without consideration of approaches to including family as part of the health care team. In this study, the authors assess family and provider openness to expanding the care team to include family participation and introduce the Family Involvement Menu as a tool to facilitate family engagement.
  
  
  METHODS
  They collected 37 family surveys and 37 clinician surveys to understand the perception, comfort level, experience, and interest of family and clinicians in including family in the care of the patient. The majority of family reported being interested and comfortable in participating in care (95% and 92%, respectively).
  
  
  RESULTS
  The majority of clinicians considered family already to be part of the health care team (92%) though only 16% reported routinely inviting families to participate in direct patient care all the time. Multiple direct patient care activities were identified as promising opportunities for family engagement. Barriers to family engagement reported included the family being scared (19%), uncomfortable (19%), or unwilling (14%) or nurses not having enough time (14%) to involve families.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  Engaging family has the potential to increase nursing availability for other tasks, enhance relationship building, and is an opportunity to introduce early education for family, better preparing them for transition of care and discharge. The Family Involvement Menu supports family engagement and can be a strategy to include family members as part of the health care team.
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Rhonda M
authors.initials: RM
authors.lastname: Wyskiel
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Bickey H
authors.initials: BH
authors.lastname: Chang
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Adrian A
authors.initials: AA
authors.lastname: Alday
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: David A
authors.initials: DA
authors.lastname: Thompson
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Michael A
authors.initials: MA
authors.lastname: Rosen
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Aaron S
authors.initials: AS
authors.lastname: Dietz
authors.affiliation: The Armstrong Institute for Patient Safety and Quality.
authors.forename: Jill A
authors.initials: JA
authors.lastname: Marsteller
mesh_terms: D017028:Caregivers / Q000706:statistics & numerical data*; D003695:Delivery of Health Care / Q000379:methods*; D006801:Humans; D010348:Patient Care Team / Q000639:trends*; D010358:Patient Participation / Q000379:methods; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires