Pediatric Family-Centered Rounds and Humanism: A Systematic Review and Qualitative Meta-analysis

Context: Pediatric family-centered rounds (FCRs) have been shown to have benefits in staff satisfaction, teaching, and rounding efficiency, but no systematic review has been conducted to explicitly examine the humanistic impact of FCRs.

Objective: The objective with this review is to determine if FCRs promote the core values of humanism in medicine by answering the question, "Do FCRs promote humanistic pediatric care?"

Data sources: Using Preferred Reporting Items for Systematic Reviews and Meta-Analyses guidelines, we conducted a search of PubMed, Web of Science, Cumulative Index of Nursing and Allied Health Literature, and Dissertation Abstracts for peer-reviewed pediatric studies through January 1, 2020. We used search terms including FCRs, communication, humanism, and the specific descriptors in the Gold Foundation's definition of humanism.

Study selection: Abstracts (n = 1003) were assessed for 5 primary outcomes: empathy, enhanced communication, partnership, respect, and satisfaction and service. We evaluated 158 full-text articles for inclusion, reconciling discrepancies through an iterative process.

Data extraction: Data abstraction, thematic analysis, and conceptual synthesis were conducted on 29 studies.

Results: Pediatric family-centered rounds (FCRs) improved humanistic outcomes within all 5 identified themes. Not all studies revealed improvement within every category. The humanistic benefits of FCRs are enhanced through interventions targeted toward provider-family barriers, such as health literacy. Patients with limited English proficiency or disabilities or who were receiving intensive care gained additional benefits.

Conclusions: Pediatric FCRs promote humanistic outcomes including increased empathy, partnership, respect, service, and communication. Limitations included difficulty in defining humanism, variable implementation, and inconsistent reporting of humanistic outcomes. Future efforts should include highlighting FCR's humanistic benefits, universal implementation, and adapting FCRs to pandemics such as coronavirus disease 2019.