Medicine and Health Sciences Commons^™

Virtual Patient/Family Communication In The Acute Care Setting, Kathleen Defigueiredo

Translational Projects (Open Access)

Patient and family-centered care strategies see patients and families as valuable healthcare team members. Such strategies thus treat these groups as essential clinical partners in providing safe, high-quality care. Participation, collaboration, and shared decision-making are central to this framework. Historically, hospitals have relied on physical presence at the bedside as a prerequisite to engaging families in the shared decision-making process. Visitor restrictions of the COVID-19 pandemic removed the primary strategy for family participation: physical presence. Healthcare organizations rapidly deployed mobile devices to help minimize the exposure of healthcare providers and provide video visits for family members. This deployment was often …