by Jamie Droke
Child Life Specialist

On April 1 of this year, the psychosocial team in the intensive care unit began a weekly family group for family members of patients in the intensive care unit. The social worker, chaplain and I (child life specialist) rotate facilitating the group meeting that has been well attended each week. We began the group after noticing the spontaneous, organic friendships that were being generated in the family waiting room.

In the ICU, we see a wide variety of diagnoses, ages, length of stays, et cetera. However, the one thing that all families in the ICU have in common is that they are facing the stress of having a child in need of critical care. Most of the staff in the ICU will fortunately never experience this stress, but all of the parents there do experience at least for a short amount of time. When the person providing support is actually going through the same thing you are, you often feel better supported and this is why these relationships between families is so crucial.

Our group is always casual, laid-back and enjoyed by the families who attend. The facilitators lay down some ground rules (everyone deserves respect, everything shared is confidential) and then present a topic related to having a child in the ICU. Some of the topics we have talked about so far include “What ties us together,” “My upside down life,” “Coping with the need to cope,” and “Communication challenges in the ICU.”

Of course, we do not limit the conversation to these topics and often families will direct the topic of conversation to something only remotely related to the planned topic. The hour meeting is not a time for us to teach families or for families to dwell on complaints. The important piece is that families feel met in the place they are and feel supported by other families facing similar situations.

I would love to hear from some of you who may have experienced an ICU admission or even an extended inpatient stay. What would you find helpful in a family group like ours and what are some topics you would like to talk about? The family group is, after all, about the families, and we want the families to be able to direct where our group goes from here.