What are the experiences of parents who have witnessed the resuscitation of their child?

When Samantha Mather was an undergraduate she undertook a review of the literature on family-witnessed resuscitation. Here we publish an extended abstract of her work

Background

Parental and family presence should be encouraged during resuscitation of children, but it is not always given. There is little research into parental and family experiences during cardiopulmonary resuscitation, or into the potential beneficial or detrimental psychosocial effects of family presence on families and healthcare professionals (Strasen et al 2016).

Methods

Key terms were identified using the population, intervention, comparison, outcome (PICO) framework (O’Connor et al 2011) and were used on the EBSCO host platform to search separately four databases: CINAHL, Medline, Academic Search Complete and e-Journals. Citation searching was used to identify other studies that could be included in the literature review.

A meta-synthesis was used to assimilate findings from