A comparison of patient, family, and nurse evaluations of the usefulness of intensive care.

As patient advocates, critical care nurses need to be cognizant of which treatments the patients and their families prefer. Therefore, we conducted a study to compare how nurses, their critically ill patients, and their families evaluate the usefulness of intensive care. A group of former medical intensive care patients (n = 72), or their family members if the patient had died, were asked how willing they would be to undergo (or to subject their relative to) intensive care again, if necessary. All nurses (n = 15) caring for these patients were asked a parallel, hypothetical question about the usefulness of intensive care to these patients and to themselves, were they to become sick. Analysis of matched pairs of patient (or family member) and nurse questionnaires (n = 38) revealed that: nurses underestimate the usefulness of intensive care as evaluated by their patients and families; and patients believe that quality of life is a less important factor in judging the usefulness of intensive care than do their nurses.