Trial Outcomes & Findings for Family Support Intervention in Intensive Care Units (NCT NCT05280691)

Study participants were family membres. ICU patients were not enrolled into the study. Only routine clinical data was used in case that general informed consent for their use in research was availalbe or given.

Unit of analysis: Intensive Care Units

A total of 36 participants did not provide their age (both study arms). The summary statistics of this specific characteristic therefore refer to a total n=849.

Quality of family care in ICU is operationalized as family satisfaction with ICU care, and measured with the Family Satisfaction in ICU questionnaire (FS-ICU-24R, German version). The FS-ICU-24R is a well-established instrument that assesses satisfaction with care (16 items) and satisfaction with involvement in decision-making (ten items). Its scores range from 0-100 with 100 indicating maximal satisfaction.

The Questionnaire on the Quality of Physician-Patient Interaction (QQPPI, original German version) is used to assess quality of communication between the ICU staff and family members during consultation. The 14 items assess aspects such as relationship-building, information exchange, and shared decision-making. The mean score ranges from 1-5 with a higher score indicating higher quality.

The Iceland Family Perceived Support Questionnaire (ICE-FPSQ, German version) is used to measure families' perception of support provided by nurses. The original English version has two subscales - emotional support (nine items) and cognitive support (five items). The ICE-FPSQ has been translated into German and is currently being validated prior to its use in the trial. A sum score is calculated for the total scale (range 14-70) and each subscale - emotional support (range 9-45) and cognitive support (range 5-25) - with higher scores indicating perception of better family support by nurses.

The Family Assessment Device - General Functioning Scale (FAD-GF-12, German version) - is used to assess overall functioning of the family system by six positive and six negative items. The mean score ranges from 1-4 with a lower score reflecting better functioning.

The Brief Resilience Scale (BRS, German version) measures the essence of resilience as the ability to bounce back from stress and is made up of three positive and three negative items. The items will be reformulated from "I" to "we" statements to assess the families' ability to bounce back from stress. The mean score ranges from 1-5 with a higher score indicating greater resilience.

The Satisfaction with Life Scale (SWLS-5, German version) measures the global dimension of subjective well-being. The sum score ranges from 5-35 with a higher score indicating a higher degree of satisfaction. It can be treated as an ordinal variable with seven levels using established thresholds.

The World Health Organization-5 Well-being Index (WHO-5, German version) measures subjective psychological well-being and is made up of five items tapping three major dimensions of positive affect as well as energy within the past two weeks. Its score ranges from 0-100, with a higher score indicating greater well-being, and has a threshold of 50 indicating depression.

An adapted version of the general Quality of Life a Visual Analog Scale (QoL-VAS) as used in the EuroQol EQ-5D questionnaire will be employed to measure general rather than health-related quality of life. The score ranges from 0-100 with a higher score representing higher quality of life.

The Distress Thermometer (DT, German version) is a validated single-item screening instrument for distress in the past week originally (and still primarily) used among cancer patients with an established threshold for potential distress It ranges from 0-100 with a higher score indicating a higher level of distress.

The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS, German version) is made up of 7 items related to anxiety (HADS-A subscale, seven items) - and has thresholds for mild anxiety and caseness for anxiety. The scores range from 0-21 with a higher score indicating worse symptoms.

The Hospital Anxiety and Depression Scale (HADS, German version) is made up of 7 items related to depression (HADS-D subscale, seven items) - and has thresholds for mild depression and caseness for depression. The scores range from 0-21 with a higher score indicating worse symptoms.

The Impact of Events Scale-R (IES-R) measures the presence and severity of symptoms associated with a traumatic event during the past week, and has three subscales - intrusion, avoidance, and hyperarousal. The six-item brief version (IES-6) used in this study includes two items from each of the three subscales, and its simple sum score (range 0-4 with a higher score indicating higher impact) has been shown to be highly correlated to the IES-R in various populations.