Meeting the needs of critical care patients after discharge home: a qualitative exploratory study of patient perspectives

ConclusionSurvivors of critical care should be equipped with information about their critical care stay, ongoing health issues and recovery and should be provided with holistic care at home. Critical care follow up was an effective way of meeting many of these needs, but this needs to be flexible to be useful to attendees. Peer support groups (face‐to‐face and online) provided information, reassurance, a social network and an avenue for those who had longer‐lasting problems than current services provide for.
Relevance to clinical practiceWhilst there are commonalities in the problems faced by critical care survivors, recovery is highly individualized, and current support services do not have sufficient flexibility to cater for this. This study shows that many survivors experience after‐effects of critical care that outlast the support they are given. These longer‐term survivors are often excluded from research studies because of fears of recall bias, resulting in poor understanding of their experiences.

Source: Nursing in Critical Care - June 22, 2017 Category: Nursing Authors: Laura Allum, Bronwen Connolly, Eamonn McKeown Tags: Research Source Type: research