Video Diaries for Family Members of ICU patients

• Research type

  Research Study

• Full title

  When Distance is an Act of Love: Exploring the use of Video Diaries for Family Members of Intensive Care Patients.

• IRAS ID

  288977

• Contact name

  Sheila Rodgers

• Contact email

  s.rodgers@ed.ac.uk

• Sponsor organisation

  University of Edinburgh

• Duration of Study in the UK

  0 years, 5 months, 31 days

• Research summary

  Due to Covid-19, intensive care unit (ICU) patients are not allowed visitors or have severely restricted visiting. Most ICU patients are unconscious or extremely weak and cannot speak on a phone or video call to their family member/s. Before these visiting restrictions, family members of ICU patients were already known to suffer significant psychological distress and now face increased distress as they are unable to visit a critically ill family member. NHS Scotland introduced video diaries as an emergency measure to try to support communication with families and reduce distress. The diaries may have a positive impact but there is a risk they could also have negative effects. We will explore staff and family members’ experiences of using video diaries and test out using measures of distress and psychological well-being of family members.
  
  Our study will take an exploratory, mixed-methods approach involving remote semi-structured interviews and structured questionnaires. Family members will be identified by ICU healthcare professionals. We shall conduct remote semi-structured interviews with family members who used video diaries during the lockdown and explore their experiences of using this medium. We shall also ask family members to complete structured questionnaires at different stages of the study related to their emotional and psychological well-being. We will also ask family members about the acceptability and feasibility of the structured questionnaires used when we interview them. We will also conduct remote semi-structured interviews with healthcare professionals from ICUs who were involved in supporting family members through the use of video diaries. We shall ask them for their views on how well they felt families were supported by video diaries and what their experiences were in using video diaries. From our findings we can then make some initial recommendations and plan a subsequent study to test effect on a larger scale.

• REC name

  South East Scotland REC 01

• REC reference

  20/SS/0127

• Date of REC Opinion

  8 Jan 2021

• REC opinion

  Further Information Favourable Opinion