Kean, Lim Chee
(2010)
A survey of Malaysian emergency
personnel on family presence
during resuscitation.
Masters thesis, Universiti Sains Malaysia.
Abstract
The practice of family presence (FP) during resuscitation is gaining a
foothold in Western countries but still largely not encouraged by Asian health-care
personnel (HCP). This study aims to provide a Malaysian data on HCPs opinions ofFP. A non-probability survey was conducted in emergency departments
(EDs) of four hospitals around Malaysia. A questionnaire was designed based on
previous similar surveys conducted in Singapore. It was edited by two emergency
physicians and pre-test was conducted in HUSM to validate and test the reliability of
the questionnaire. All HCPs in four hospitals were included in this study which ran
from October until December 2009. A total of 273 replies were obtained of which one third were doctors and the
rest paramedics. Mean age was 32 years and there were equal number of male and
female participants. The HCPs had worked an average of7.5 years with 5.1 years in the
ED. It was found that 27% of doctors were more agreeable to FP compared to
paramedics (p=O.OOl). However 54% of doctors and 32.4% of paramedics agreed that
relatives had a right to FP. 57.6% of doctors compares to 67.6% of paramedics would
like to be present during their own relative's resuscitation. Among the reasons for not
allowing FP were it would be traumatic experience to the family, medico-legal reasons,
breach of patient's privacy, interfere with resuscitation process, overcrowding, increase
stress to HCPs and prolonging resuscitation efforts. Advantages of FP identified were assuring the family everything had been done, facilitate mourning, strengthen family
bond and allow for final rites. Logistic regression of variant showed that the odds of a
doctor agreeing to FP was 2.86 that of a paramedic (p-value=0.002). In conclusion, it was found that Malaysian emergency HCPs do not agree
to FP. Surveys of the public may help to assess their opinions and whether it disagree
with HCPs opinions.
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