Spouses of ICU patients are extremely anxious and experience high levels of negative mood. They have unsatisfied need to be close to patients and to be helpful to patients while they are in the ICU. The purpose of this research is to reduce the emotional distress spouses experience when their partners are unexpectedly hospitalized in critical care. Control theory can be used to reduce the discrepancy between spouses' passive role in ICU and their desired state to be actively involved in comforting patients. Adult attachment theory sets the standard for spouses' behavior: to be close and to be responsive to patients. It is hypothesized that spouses who receive information describing ways to respond to and comfort patients (the experimental intervention) will experience less negative mood and more positive mood throughout the hospital stay and into early recovery and be more satisfied with ICU nursing care than spouses who receive information related to usual care. Experimental spouses will report higher perceptions of readiness for discharge. The effect of attachment style, caregiving style, and optimism on outcome measures will be explored. Eighty spouses of patients in a Medical ICU and Surgical ICU will be randomly assigned to treatment group. Patient status variables (severity of illness and level of responsiveness) will be controlled in all analyses.
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