“We use the FS-ICU 24 to demonstrate our current performance and value the bench-marked reports we receive to help us identify both our strengths and our opportunities for improvement.”

Measuring Satisfaction

Patient and family centred outcomes recognized as important outcome measures as traditional measures (adjusted mortality rates, LOS) do not tell the whole story. Given the nature of care in a complex, multidisciplinary, technologically driven environment, there are many aspects of care that potentially may have negative consequences for both the patient and the family. These aspects of care need to be measured using systematic and validated tools.

The public demands more accountability for the use of public funds and assurance that the health care system is performing effectively. By measuring families’ perceptions of quality of care, one can evaluate the quality and identify and strengths and opportunities for improvement in the ICU program.

There is a relationship between the families experience and perceptions of quality and their subsequent long-term psychological well-being. By identifying families with negative perceptions and with appropriate interventions, we can improve the long-term health outcomes of families of critically ill patients.

To be held as a standard by which ICUs are judged and as a target for quality improvement, measurements of family satisfaction need to be valid and reliable. The FS-ICU questionnaire meets these standards of excellence. Consider the followings quotes below:

In a systematic review of 27 different tools measuring family satisfaction by Van den Broek et al (2015), the FS-ICU was classified as being of “well-established quality.” The FS-ICU displayed the most extensively researched and best psychometric properties, and was hence recommended for further use and study

(Van den Broek et al. Crit Care Med 2015; 43:1731–1744)

“Our study suggests that the FS-ICU is a valid and reliable tool for assessing family satisfaction in the ICU… Given the importance of surrogate decision makers in the ICU, we anticipate that tools like the FS-ICU will be an essential part of the highly functioning ICU’s ‘improvement toolbox’ and an important outcome measure for randomized trials.”

(Wall et al. Crit Care Med 2007; 35:271-279)

“A number of tools have been developed to assess family satisfaction but the most widely validated is the Family Satisfaction in the Intensive Care Unit questionnaire (FS-ICU)” “The FS-ICU-24 demonstrated good psychometric properties in the UK setting, with a high degree of internal consistency… The finding of high internal consistency is consistent with both the original study which derived the FS-ICU-24 in North America, and subsequent single-hospital validations in the Philippines, Germany, Turkey, and Greece.”

(Harrison et al. Journal of Critical Care 2017; 38:346-350)