Short-term patient and family counselling for acute health change - an integrative literature review

Abstract

The purpose of this integrative literature review is to describe existing research knowledge on short-term counselling of patients and family members undergoing acute health change. The data consisted of 25 research articles and five literature reviews from the years 2003-2015, analysed using inductive content analysis. The research knowledge was found to describe elements of good patient counselling, satisfaction with the elements of good patient counselling, developing the elements of good patient counselling and impact of the patient counselling elements. Focussing on the patient’s individual life situation, use of multiple counselling methods and provision of information in good interaction contribute to high quality patient counselling. Some patients and family members were satisfied with the patient counselling elements while others expressed needs for the development of the elements. The conflicting results indicate a need to develop a uniform, systematic patient counselling method, with special attention paid on the quality of counselling.