The Impact of the Family Room App on Caregivers

Caregiver Engagement - Practical Aspects: FAMily Engagement (FAME) Tool

The FAMily Engagement (FAME) questionnaire is a self-rated instrument developed to assess current family engagement. Questions address key principles of family-centered care, such as dignity and respect, information sharing, participation, and collaboration. They also address family engagement domains, including family presence, family needs, communication and education, decision making, and direct care. A five-point Likert scale (1=strongly agree, 2=agree, 3=neutral, 4=disagree, 5=strongly disagree) is used for responses, which are transformed to a 0-100 scoring system by dividing the sum of the scores by the number of questions answered. Higher scores indicate greater engagement in care and lower scores indicating lesser engagement.

Daily Activity: Family Room Application

The daily activity logged in the Family Room application at bedside is assessed (intervention group only).

Daily Patient Symptoms - Severity of Illness: Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation (Apache II)

APACHE II (Acute Physiology and Chronic Health Evaluation II) is a severity-of-disease classification system used in the ICU. An integer score is assessed by medical staff from 0 to 71 is computed based on several measurements. Higher scores correspond to more severe disease and a higher risk of death. Information is taken from the electronic health record.

Daily Patient Symptoms: Presence of Lines, Tubes and Equipment

A daily count of number of lines, tubes and equipment present on ICU patient participant is taken. Information is taken from the electronic health record.

Caregiver Well-being: Screening Tool for Psychological Distress (STOP-D)

This is a self-rated 5 item instrument which provides severity scores for each of the common psychosocial problem areas: depression, anxiety, stress, anger, and low social support. Scoring is "0" (not at all) to "9" (severely). The higher the score the greater the psychological distress.

Caregiver Well-being: Caregiver Self-Assessment Questionnaire

This is a self-rated 18-item instrument devised by the American Medical Association for physicians to assess the stress-levels of family caregivers. Caregivers are asked to respond either "Yes" or "No" to a series of statements, simple scoring system allows family caregiver themselves to score their results and to determine whether or not they are highly stressed. Points are added for each 'yes' answer for 16 questions plus a 1 to 10 score for a question of current stress levels and for a question on comparing perceived current health compared to a year ago. A higher number means more stress.

Caregiver Engagement - Psychological Experience: Caregiving Health Engagement Scale (CHE-s)

This is a self-rated 7 item multidimensional instrument to evaluate the impact of burden on different aspects of a caregiver's life. Caregivers respond to a series of statements, indicating their level of agreement or disagreement. The CHE is scored based on a Likert-type scale. The total score reflects the caregiver's overall engagement in healthcare. Higher scores indicate greater engagement.

Caregiver Resilience: Connor-Davidson Resilience Scale (CD-RISC2)

This is a self-rated 2 item instrument that measures resilience as it relates to ability to thrive in the face of adversity. Answers are on a 5-point scale, not true at all=0, rarely true=1, sometimes true=2, often true=3, and true nearly all of the time=4. Higher scores indicating greater perceived resilience.