Enhancing communication between family members and health care team members within the pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) is a national clinical and research priority. Poor communication can increase patients’ length of stay, hospital costs, and the likelihood of delivering value-discordant care. Family members of PICU patients report numerous communication barriers, such as poor access to members of the health care team, inadequate care coordination, and infrequent clinician-initiated discussions. Despite these rec-ognized barriers, there is a salient lack of interventions to support communication between PICU family members and members of the health care team.
To address this issue, the investigators studied the feasibility of implementing a navigator-based communication intervention called PICU Supports and assessed the responses of family members and clinicians to that intervention. PICU Supports comprises specific intervention components for the navigator, patients’ family members, and health care providers. The navigator’s intervention components included a rigorous navigator- training protocol; a...