Do you know how to prepare families for withdrawal of life support from their loved one? Do you know specifically what to tell them? Kirchhoff and colleagues describe the development and testing of an informational intervention to prepare families for what will happen during this process. Specific messages include the following:

See Article, pp 113–122

Do you offer the chance for your patients’ families to be with their loved one during resuscitation? AACN, the Emergency Nurses Association, and the American Heart Association urge you to do so! Twibell and colleagues studied nurses’ perceptions of the risk and benefits of this practice as well as their self-confidence in doing so. They found the following:

These authors also suggest that nurses confident about family presence should be members of code teams, should act as role models for novice nurses, and should teach families about presence during resuscitation.

See Article, pp 101–112

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