Family presence during CPR was associated with positive results on psychological variables and did not interfere with medical efforts, increase stress in the health care team, or result in medicolegal conflicts. (Funded by Programme Hospitalier de Recherche Clinique 2008 of the French Ministry of Health; ClinicalTrials.gov number, NCT01009606.).

BackgroundThe themes of qualitative assessments that characterize the experience of family members offered the choice of observing cardiopulmonary resuscitation (CPR) of a loved one have not been formally identified.Methods and FindingsIn the context of a multicenter randomized clinical trial offering family members the choice of observing CPR of a patient with sudden cardiac arrest, a qualitative analysis, with a sequential explanatory design, was conducted. The aim of the study was to understand family members’ experience during CPR. All participants were interviewed by phone at home three months after cardiac arrest. Saturation was reached after analysis of 30 interviews of a randomly selected sample of 75 family members included in the trial. Four themes were identified: 1- choosing to be actively involved in the resuscitation; 2- communication between the relative and the emergency care team; 3- perception of the reality of the death, promoting acceptance of the loss; 4- experience and reactions of the relatives who did or did not witness the CPR, describing their feelings. Twelve sub-themes further defining these four themes were identified. Transferability of our findings should take into account the country-specific medical system.ConclusionsFamily presence can help to ameliorate the pain of the death, through the feeling of having helped to support the patient during the passage from life to death and of having participated in this important moment. Our results showed the central role of communication between the family and the emergency care team in facilitating the acceptance of the reality of death.

At 1 year after the event, psychological benefits persist for those family members offered the possibility to witness the CPR of a relative in cardiac arrest.