Experiences of health care professionals in intensive care when families participate in clinician handovers: a qualitative systematic review protocol

Objective: This review will evaluate the experiences of health care professionals in the intensive care unit when families participate in clinician handovers. Introduction: Families of patients admitted to the intensive care unit report stress and anxiety. Family participation in multidisciplinary rounds in the intensive care unit may improve patient and family outcomes. However, health care professionals have different attitudes toward family participation. Furthermore, there is limited understanding of the barriers, facilitators, and other outcomes of family participation in clinician handovers for the patient, family, and health care professionals. Inclusion criteria: The review will consider studies involving health care professionals (eg, nurses, physicians, allied health professionals) and any type of family participation, from bedside presence to participation in decision-making. Clinician handovers may be multidisciplinary ward rounds or nursing handovers. Settings may be the adult, pediatric, or neonatal intensive care unit in rural or metropolitan regions in any country. Studies in other clinical contexts will be excluded. Methods: Databases to be searched include CINAHL, MEDLINE, Scopus, PsycINFO, Embase, Emcare, Web of Science, and ProQuest Central. The search will be limited to articles written in English from 2000 to the present. Two independent reviewers will screen titles and abstracts, assess the full text of selected citations for inclusion, and assess methodological quality. A data extraction tool will be used, and findings will be assigned a level of credibility. Meta-aggregation will be used to synthesize findings. Disagreements between reviewers will be discussed to reach consensus; a third reviewer will be consulted if necessary. Systematic review registration number: PROSPERO CRD42020223011