Dear Editor,

We are pleased to respond to the valuable comments (1) regarding our article titled “Determination of the Anxiety and the Needs of Family Members of Critical Care Patients in Emergency Departments” (2).

The study was planned when many new violence cases against healthcare staff in the emergency facilities appeared on media sources a couple of years ago, which drove our focus on patient relatives. Our results have shown that effective communication and cooperation between healthcare staff and relatives of the patients can prevent conflict and chaos in emergency services. Unfortunately, the risk of such unwanted events increases in the emergency services.

As emphasized by the authors of the correspondence, empathy with the patient and accompanying people, understanding their needs can yield good communication, which in turn increases the quality of care received by the patient and the carer. As such, the relatives or the carers may feel more confident with the healthcare service, and negative thoughts and behaviors can be prevented (3-5).

Notwithstanding, our results cannot be generalized to other settings like primary care services, home care or outpatient clinics of tertiary care facilities.

Ethics

Peer-review: Internally peer-reviewed.

Financial Disclosure: The authors declared that this study received no financial support.