Exploration of the expectations and experiences of significant others
Research type
Research Study
Full title
An exploration of the expectations and experiences of patients’ Significant Others in the Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit.
IRAS ID
203369
Contact name
Graeme Measor
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Teesside University
Clinicaltrials.gov Identifier
Teesside University Study Number, 068/16
Duration of Study in the UK
0 years, 8 months, days
Research summary
This research has derived from the researcher’s own experiences working within a Cardiothoracic Intensive Care Unit (CICU) environment. The researcher is interested in exploring the experiences and expectations of patients Significant Others (SOs) to the Unit CICU. SOs are defined by the researcher as someone a patient has an established relationship with and visits the patient whilst in CICU. This encapsulates family members, friends, carers, spouses, partners and Next of Kin (NoK). A brief literature review concurred with the researcher’s belief that SOs can feel shocked and stressed visiting a patient on CICU. Evidence suggests that met expectations can increase satisfaction and that informed nursing care improves psychological well-being for SOs and patients. The aim is to gain knowledge and understanding from SOs perspective to help to inform nursing care and offer support to future SOs. This will be a mixed-methods questionnaire survey design. Participants will be invited to take part via a poster in the outpatients department. Participation is completely voluntary and the questionnaires anonymous. Participants must be over 18 year old and have visited a patient in CICU within the last 6 months. Two open questions will invite participants to describe in their own words, their experiences and expectations regarding visiting a patient in cardiothoracic intensive care. Four further Likert Scale questions will be used to gage the strength of the participant's feelings regarding their experiences and expectations. The qualitative data from the open questions will be inputted in NVivo software for analysis and data from the Likert scale questions inputted into SPSS software. The poster and questionnaires will be displayed for 2 months in the outpatient department and the questionnaire will take approximately 10 minutes to complete.
REC name
HSC REC B
REC reference
16/NI/0188
Date of REC Opinion
31 Aug 2016
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion