Introduction:

Family members of patients admitted to an Intensive Care Unit present high uncertainty level due to not knowing what is happening and to not having clear details about the related events; therefore, interventions are required to allow modulating those levels.

Objective:

To evaluate the effect of an educational Nursing intervention compared to conventional care on the uncertainty of family members of patients hospitalized in an ICU.

Materials and methods:

An experimental study with a sample comprised by 132 relatives of patients admitted to an ICU, randomly distributed in four Solomon groups (33 in each group).

The Nursing intervention based on the concepts of the Uncertainty in Illness Theory was applied to both experimental groups and devised under the Whittemore and Grey parameters with three moments:

assessment; education about the relative's hospitalization in the ICU; and accompaniment. This was done with pre-assessments for two groups and post-assessments for the four groups, using the PPUS-FM Uncertainty Scale. The data were analyzed by means of descriptive statistics and respective non-parametric analyses. The study took into account the ethical principles in research.

Results:

The family members in the experimental groups presented a lower final uncertainty level when compared to the control groups, with a difference of 73.04 points and a p-value of 0.001.

Discussion:

Standardized interventions and under a theoretical model allow reducing uncertainty in relatives of patients in ICUs.

Conclusions:

The Nursing intervention based on the Uncertainty theory allows reducing uncertainty in relatives of patients hospitalized in an Intensive Care Unit.