How Families and Health Care Practitioners Experience Family Presence during Resuscitation and Invasive Procedures.
BACKGROUND
The presence of family members during resuscitation and invasive procedures has been, and continues to be debated in the literature.


OBJECTIVE
To synthesize the best available research evidence on how families and health care practitioners experience family presence during resuscitation and invasive procedures.


METHODS
Studies about families and health care practitioners experiencing family presence during resuscitation and invasive procedures were considered.This review considered family members and health care practitioners who had experienced the phenomena of family presence during resuscitation or invasive procedures.Family members and health care practitioners experience of family presence during resuscitation or invasive procedures.Qualitative evidence consisting of, but not limited to, designs such as interpretive, descriptive-exploratory, observational, phenomenology, ethnography, grounded theory, hermeneutics, participatory action research, and critical theory were included in the review.


METHODS
The search strategy sought to find both published and unpublished research articles from 1985 to 2009. The review was limited to papers written in English.


METHODS
Each paper was assessed by two independent reviewers for methodological quality prior to inclusion in the review using the standardised tools developed by the Joanna Briggs Institute.


METHODS
Data were using standardized data extraction tools developed by the Joanna Briggs Institute.


RESULTS
The Joanna Briggs Institute' approach for meta-synthesis by meta-aggregation was used.


RESULTS
25 studies were included in the review. 154 findings were extracted and synthesized into 14 categories and 5 synthesized findings.


CONCLUSIONS
A tension is created between the belief of most family members that being present is a right and health care practitioners who believe they should have control over the circumstances of the practice. Although healthcare practitioners express concern that the practice will cause the family to experience psychological trauma the data does not suggest that this is the case. Most family members describe their presence as an opportunity to comfort and to gain closure.


CONCLUSIONS
IMPLICATIONS FOR RESEARCH.
1. Indiana Center For Evidence-Based Nursing Practice: An affiliating centre of the Joanna Briggs Collaborative at Purdue University Calumet School of Nursing.
Leslie
L
Rittenmeyer
Dolores
D
Huffman