To develop clinical practice guidelines for the support of the patient and family in the adult, pediatric, or neonatal patient-centered ICU.

A multidisciplinary task force of experts in critical care practice was convened from the membership of the American College of Critical Care Medicine (ACCM) and the Society of Critical Care Medicine (SCCM) to include representation from adult, pediatric, and neonatal intensive care units.

The task force members reviewed the published literature. The Cochrane library, Cinahl, and MedLine were queried for articles published between 1980 and 2003. Studies were scored according to Cochrane methodology. Where evidence did not exist or was of a low level, consensus was derived from expert opinion.

The topic was divided into subheadings: decision making, family coping, staff stress related to family interactions, cultural support, spiritual/religious support, family visitation, family presence on rounds, family presence at resuscitation, family environment of care, and palliative care. Each section was led by one task force member. Each section draft was reviewed by the group and debated until consensus was achieved. The draft document was reviewed by a committee of the Board of Regents of the ACCM. After steering committee approval, the draft was approved by the SCCM Council and was again subjected to peer review by this journal.

More than 300 related studies were reviewed. However, the level of evidence in most cases is at Cochrane level 4 or 5, indicating the need for further research. Forty-three recommendations are presented that include, but are not limited to, endorsement of a shared decision-making model, early and repeated care conferencing to reduce family stress and improve consistency in communication, honoring culturally appropriate requests for truth-telling and informed refusal, spiritual support, staff education and debriefing to minimize the impact of family interactions on staff health, family presence at both rounds and resuscitation, open flexible visitation, way-finding and family-friendly signage, and family support before, during, and after a death.

Objective: To provide clinicians with evidence-based strategies to optimize support of the family of critically ill patients in the ICU.

Methods: We used the Council of Medical Specialty Societies principles for the development of clinical guidelines as the framework for guideline development. We assembled an international multidisciplinary team of 29 members with expertise in guideline development, evidence analysis and family-centered care to revise the 2007 Clinical Practice Guidelines for Support of the Family in the Patient-Centered Intensive Care Unit. We conducted a scoping review of qualitative research that explored family-centered care in the ICU. Thematic analyses were conducted to support Population, Intervention, Comparison, Outcome (PICO) question development. Patients and families validated the importance of interventions and outcomes. We then conducted a systematic review using the Grading of Recommendations, Assessment, Development and Evaluations (GRADE) methodology to make recommendations for practice. Recommendations were subjected to electronic voting with pre-established voting thresholds. No industry funding was associated with guideline development.

Results: The scoping review yielded 683 qualitative studies; 228 were used for thematic analysis and PICO question development. The systematic review search yielded 4158 reports after de-duplication and 76 additional studies were added from alerts and hand searches; 238 studies met inclusion criteria. We made 23 recommendations from moderate, low and very low level of evidence on the topics of: communication with family members, family presence, family support, consultations and ICU team members, and operational and environmental issues. We provide recommendations for future research and work-tools to support translation of the recommendations into practice.

Conclusions: These guidelines identify the evidence base for best practices for family-centered care in the ICU. All recommendations were weak, highlighting the relative nascency of this field of research and the importance of future research to identify the most effective interventions to improve this important aspect of ICU care.