Recommendations for the Use of Family Conferences in Family Medicine - a Scoping Review

Abstract

Family conferences are pre-planned meetings between the treatment team, patient, family members and representatives of other involved disciplines on an agreed topic. There is no review of family conferences in family medicine. The aim of the scoping review is to compile the available recommendations on the use, implementation and documentation of family conferences in family medicine and other medical fields that can be transferred to the family practice setting. Systematic literature search in the databases PubMed, Scopus, Google Scholar and Cochrane Library. Articles published in German or English up to 31.12.2021 were included. The fields of family therapy, paediatrics and neonatology were excluded. The search yielded 1,557 hits; after deducting duplicates and reviewing the abstracts, 108 hits were used for the full-text review. Of these, 53 hits were included in the review. Many recommendations on the use, preparation and implementation of family conferences can be transferred to the FM setting. For successful family conferences, a structured procedure is recommended, which includes good preparation of all participants, a multi-stage procedure during the family conference itself, as well as good documentation and follow-up of the agreements. The use of proven patient-centred communication models is recommended. Although there are no validated concepts for the procedure of family conferences in the FM setting, practice recommendations can be derived that should be empirically tested in practice and in studies.