Does witnessing resuscitation help parents come to terms with the death of their child? A review of the literature

The aim of this review is to determine if witnessed resuscitation helps parents come to terms with the death of their child. Witnessed resuscitation is a controversial subject. There is disagreement in the literature and the opinions of healthcare professionals, as to whether parents should be present during the resuscitation of their children. This is an international problem that occurs consistently, when caring for patients requiring resuscitation. Despite this, however, research indicates that the advantages of this form of resuscitation for parents far outweigh the disadvantages. Electronic searches of PubMed, CINAHL and OVID were performed, with a manual search of retrieved articles. Primary studies, which were included, examined parents' views of witnessed resuscitation in children. Of 1038 articles, eight met the inclusion criteria. These included qualitative and quantitative studies, which explored whether parents wanted to be present. The benefits and detrimental effects were explored, in order to determine whether witnessed resuscitation helps parents come to terms with the death of their child. Of 1253 parents, 87.1% wanted to be present. All but one parent believed witnessing resuscitation should be the choice of the parent and all but one parent who was present would do so again indicating that witnessed resuscitation is beneficial to parents. Effective parental support is needed whatever their choice and policies need to be in place to support witnessed resuscitation. More research is required to establish the long term outcomes of witnessed resuscitation as no randomised controlled trials have yet been completed.