Grant: Travel Awards - Institute Community Support

Background- Family-centered care (FCC) involves families as active partners in a patient's care. Research shows that FCC can improve patient outcomes, but how it is practiced varies. To help make FCC more consistent, our team created a model called Alberta Family Integrated Care (AB FICare) to give healthcare professionals (HCPs) tools and guidance to support meaningful family involvement in care. While AB FICare has led to better outcomes in neonatal intensive care units (ICUs), our work suggests that HCPs still face challenges that can limit the use of FCC in other hospital settings. Approach - To prepare for adapting AB FICare to pediatric and adult ICUs, we explored what makes FCC difficult to put into practice. We conducted interviews with 24 HCPs (including nurses, doctors, and leaders) and visited eight hospital units (three pediatric units and five adult ICUs) in Alberta and Saskatchewan. We analyzed interview transcripts and compared the results with what we observed during site visits. This helped us understand current practices, barriers, and opportunities for improvement in family-centered care. Results to Date - We identified several common challenges that make it harder for HCPs to fully integrate families into care: 1) Limited time and staff resources: "I barely have time to get done the things I need to do for my patients." 2) Communication difficulties: "Training around respectful communication and conflict resolution would be huge." 3) Uncertainty about family involvement: "As a new nurse, you're already stressed... there might be discomfort with getting parents involved." Conclusion - Addressing real-world challenges like time pressures, communication barriers, and uncertainty around family roles will be key to making FCC work in busy hospital environments. Insights from this work will guide how we adapt AB FICare for pediatric and adult ICUs and may help strengthen other initiatives that aim to improve care quality and health system performance.