Aim: To assess and compare local Emergency Department medical and nursing staff attitudes towards witnessed resuscitation.
Methods: Over a period from October 2002 to March 2003, we conducted a self-administered survey of doctors and nurses working in the Emergency Department of the Singapore General Hospital (SGH). We issued 160 forms and received 132 responses, giving a response rate of 82.5%.
Results: Should relatives be present during resuscitation? Eighty percent of doctors and 78% of nurses said no. However 32.1% of doctors and 24.1% of nurses had received requests from relatives of patients to be present during resuscitation in the last 6 months. The most frequent reasons for not wanting relatives to be present were: concern that watching the resuscitation process will be a traumatic experience for relatives, relatives might ask too many questions and interfere with resuscitation, relatives might cause stress for staff performing resuscitation, and medico-legal issues might arise. A total of 78.4% of doctors felt that the decision to allow family presence during resuscitation should be made by the senior doctor and not the nursing officer (P=0.001). However, nurses were more likely to feel that it should be a team decision (P<0.001).
Conclusion: Locally, we found that medical staff are generally not in favour of witnessed resuscitation. More research is needed to assess attitudes of the general public, and whether this diverges greatly from medical staff attitudes.