The Effect of Empathetic Nursing Combined with Family-Participatory Nursing on Psychological Stress Responses in Critically Ill Patients in the Emergency Department

Abstract

To investigate the effects of empathetic nursing combined with family-participatory nursing on psychological stress responses in critically ill patients in the emergency department, 96 critically ill patients admitted to the emergency department of a tertiary A-level hospital in mainland China between April 2025 and April 2026 were enrolled. Participants were evenly divided into a control group and an observation group based on admission sequence in respective, with 48 patients in each group. The control group received traditional nursing interventions, while the observation group received empathetic nursing combined with family-participatory nursing. The effects of these two nursing interventions on patients' psychological status, post-traumatic stress disorder (PTSD), and patient satisfaction were compared. Results illustrated that in pre-intervention period, both SAS & SDS scores and IES-R scores showed no significant difference between groups (P > 0.05); while in post-intervention era, observation group patients exhibited significantly lower SAS & SDS scores and IES-R scores than control group counterparts (P < 0.05). Meanwhile, patient satisfaction survey scores were significantly higher in the observation group (P < 0.05). In conclusion, empathetic nursing combined with family-participatory care could offer a novel pathway for humanistic care in critically ill emergency department patients. This approach could not only effectively improve psychological status and post-traumatic stress disorder symptoms in critically ill emergency patients, but also enhance patient satisfaction, and thus warrant clinical implementation in depth on a larger scale.