Virtual visiting in intensive care unit during covid-19 pandemic: A window to the patient/family centered care

This paper aims to investigate barriers and opportunities of the virtual visiting in intensive care unit during Covid-19 pandemic.

Face-to-face visits of hospitalized patients in intensive care units reduce separation anxiety and stress caused by hospitalization, as well as increase the feeling of comfort and safety in patients. In addition, it is the key to patient/family-centered care. However, the Covid-19 pandemic and its related restrictions ruled out the possibility of using the family's potential and providing patient/family-centered care. Virtual visiting has been proposed as a solution to remove the family's distance from the patient.

This review was conducted by searching out databases, Web of Science, Scopus, PubMed, Magiran, SID and Cochrane with the keywords, Covid-19, Video calls, Family-patient center care, Intensive care unit, and Virtual visiting without time limitation. The inclusion criteria were the publication of the article in Persian or English language and the availability of the full text of the articles. In total, 45 articles were found, most of which focused on virtual appointments and virtual patient visits by physicians. After removing irrelevant papers, and the cases without full text, 29 articles were evaluated in terms of quality. Finally, 10 articles were evaluated in terms of subject, and the purpose related to the present study.

During Covid-91 pandemic, virtual visits were done in intensive care units in most medical centers using cell phones and tablets through social networks facilities. In all cases, families and health care providers were satisfied with this communication method, but they considered it was not a suitable substitute for face-to-face meetings. They believed that this method combined with face-to-face meetings would be more effective. Lack of regular and systematic planning, ambiguities in the duties of health care providers in the field of holding virtual visiting, lack of access to the internet at a suitable speed, and the complexity of working with smartphones for some families, were barriers of this method.

  Virtual visiting provides a form of presence for families who are far away from their patients. Via this method, not only one but also all the family members can visit the patient. Although this method did not affect the stress and anxiety of the family and patients, but it was able to create a positive experience for them during hospitalization in intensive care units. Moreover, by involving the family in treatment process and informing them opens the ways to reach the patient/family-centered care in intensive care units.