Hi everyone, I'm new to allnurses, just joined today! My name is Ester and I work at a general ICU (40 beds) at a hospital in Eindhoven, the Netherlands (home city of Philips!). I wanted to ask all of you for your input; at our ICU we're trying to establish new ways to communicate with the family of our patients and to enhance communication between patient and family, using multi-media. I was hoping to exchange ideas and experiences here... for example; is the family of a patient able to make online appointments for a talk with the doctor? or can family chat with a patient using skype, or can they see them using a webcam? What are your experiences with this, do you embrace these technologies or do you face difficulties/limitations and if so, what are they? Looking forward to hearing from you! Greetings Ester