Table 2.
Proportion of participants reporting they were ‘very comfortable’ speaking up in specific ICU conversations
| ICU conversation* | Overall n=1155 |
Current ICU admission n=105 |
Prior ICU admission n=1050 |
| How comfortable would you be asking a member of your medical team: (% very comfortable) | |||
| To review with you the name, dose or reason for medications when they are administered (to be sure they are correct)? | 811 (70.2) | 72 (68.6) | 739 (70.4) |
| Whether he/she has cleaned his/her hands? | 481 (41.6) | 32 (30.5) | 449 (42.8) |
| For a meeting with the healthcare team to review your loved one’s health status? | 726 (62.9) | 58 (55.2) | 668 (63.6) |
| About concerns you may have regarding your loved one’s medical care? | 779 (67.4) | 61 (58.1) | 718 (68.4) |
| To discuss a disagreement where you or your loved one wants less aggressive medical care than the team is proposing? | 520 (45.0) | 37 (35.2) | 483 (46.0) |
| To discuss a disagreement where you or your loved one wants more aggressive medical care than the team is proposing? | 504 (43.6) | 33 (31.4) | 471 (44.9) |
| About a possible mistake in your loved one’s medical care? | 624 (54.0) | 48 (45.7) | 576 (54.9) |
| To clarify if he/she gives you confusing information? | 746 (64.6) | 55 (52.4) | 691 (65.8) |
| Overall comfort | |||
| Speaking up summary score† | 27.3 (4.4) | 26.0 (5.5) | 27.4 (4.2) |
*Respondents rated their comfort speaking up in each conversation on a scale from 1 to 4. Here we present the number (and percent) of respondents who selected a comfort level of 4 (‘very comfortable’) for the specified conversation.
†Presented as mean (SD). Possible range: 8–32.
ICU, intensive care unit.