Psychological Factors Affecting the Family’s Satisfaction of Patients in an Intensive Care Unit: The Dominant Role of Self-Compassion and Resilience

Abstract

Background: Family members of Intensive Care Unit (ICU) patients are subject to a higher risk of depression, anxiety, and stress-related disorders. This psychological distress inevitably affects their perception of the quality of care that their relative receives. The aim of this study is to enlighten the effect of psychopathology, resilience, and self-compassion on the satisfaction of family members of ICU patients and examine the role of self-compassion and resilience as explaining variables of the psychopathology and satisfaction relation. Methods: One hundred and seventy-six family members participated in the study. Each participant completed the Symptom Check List 90 (SCL-90-R), the Family Satisfaction in the Intensive Care Unit (FS-ICU) questionnaire, the Connor-Davidson Mental Endurance Scale (CD-RISC), and the Self-Compassion scale (SCS). Analysis of variance and path analysis was applied in order to test the research hypotheses. Results: The patient’s age, patient’s gender, type of relation, and age of the family member did not have a statistically significant direct or interaction effect on the satisfaction of the family members. The psychopathology had a significant negative correlation with the total satisfaction of the family members. The self-compassion was found to have a significant direct effect on psychopathology and a significant indirect effect on satisfaction via resilience, while both resilience and self-compassion had significant direct or indirect effects on satisfaction. Self-compassion was found to eliminate the mediation role of resilience on psychopathology and the resilience and psychopathology effect on satisfaction. Conclusions: Self-compassion emerged as the most important personality characteristic concerning the satisfaction of family members of ICU patients. Our study indicates that interventions aiming to enhance self-compassion will help patients’ relatives cope with the particularly stressful experience of the intensive care unit.