Family engagement (FE) in patient care at the intensive care unit (ICU) is essential to achieve positive patient-centered clinical outcomes (Elcokany and Abdel Wareth, 2019; Goldfarb et al., 2022). Research shows that FE resulted in reducing ICU length of stay (LOS) by about a day, and hospital LOS from 3.78 days to 2.29 days (Lee et al., 2019, Rosa et al., 2017). In addition, FE reduces patient's stress and anxiety, improves patients’ orientation and delirium; enhances patients' satisfaction and experience with care, helps with patient’s recovery (Jaberi et al., 2020, Heydari et al., 2020, Kleinpell et al., 2019), and improves safety, quality, and delivery of care (Hetland, 2018). A recent study showed that engaging family members in daily interdisciplinary care rounds improved communication, increased patient, family, and healthcare professionals’ satisfaction, and allowed for consistent teaching to house staff (Goldfarb et al., 2020). Rounds for this study are patient and family-centered care interdisciplinary rounds (PFCC-IR) activity conducted at the bedside in partnership with patients, their families, and the healthcare professionals involved in providing the care (Cypress & Allred, 2023). However, in practice, families are often excluded during interdisciplinary care rounds in the ICU (Frivold et al., 2021). At the same time, healthcare professionals are reluctant to have family members present during rounds (Hamilton et al., 2020). Thus, FE in care for critically ill patients remains an inconsistent practice and an understudied area of nursing science (Hamilton, 2020).

Active FE in patient care in ICU settings continuously receives little attention in research and policy related to opposing ideologies about family involvement, and ambiguity or varying opinions of ICU nurses about the family’s role (Hetland et al., 2018). Aside from nurses, ICU healthcare professionals also have varying perceptions and reluctance about FE in ICU care, such as difficulties in performing procedures in the presence of family members, crowding at the bedside, workflow interruption, and time limitation (Kleinpell et al., 2018, Kleinpell et al., 2019), shortage of manpower, staff resistance to change, and lack of medical leadership (Hetland et al., 2017). Thus, without nurses’ and healthcare professionals’ support for FE, it is difficult to further explore and test the benefits of understanding how healthcare professionals can involve families in direct patient care such as in interdisciplinary rounds that can guide future studies that aim to test FE interventions.

Engaging patients and family members in care is a needed paradigm shift in our healthcare system (Goldfarb et al., 2020). Understanding the diverse healthcare professionals’ perspectives on FE during PFCC-IR is also essential. Empowering families and healthcare professionals in critical care through structured organizational support is key to achieving high-quality, positive patient-family care and outcomes (Kiwanuka et al., 2019, Kleinpell et al., 2019, McAndrew et al., 2020). As part of a larger multisite experimental study, this article focused on the qualitative exploratory understanding of healthcare professionals’ perception of the facilitators and barriers to FE during PFCC-IR in the ICU.