Huvudintresseområde Patient dairy and follow up after intensivecare  
                            
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	Eva Åkerman Intensivecare nurse, BScN Intensivvårdsavdelningen Universitetssjukhuset i Malmö Sweden E-mail: eva.akerman@sgmail.com

Abstract

The patients experiences of a diary and a follow up visit after ICU treatment.

Introduction:
Patients treated at Intensive Care Unit (ICU) are often suffering from amnesia regarding their stay in ICU. Instead they remember hallucinations, fictions and nightmares. They do not realise how serious their sickness has been. These could lead to both psychological and physical problems after the treatment (1). To help these patients recover after the hospitalisation the staff is writing a diary, with photographs, that describe what happened to the patient during the time in ICU. They are also offered a follow up visit to the ICU to get better understanding of what happened to them.

Methods:
The study is carried out with a qualitative methodology, with partly structured questions. Interviews have been carried out with eight patients that all have been nursed at ICU during year 2002. Each interview was recorded on tape then analyzed and categorized. The purpose of the interviews was to find out the patients reactions to: 1. Receiving a diary regarding their time spent at ICU. 2. The follow up visit to ICU after the treatment. 3. The importance of a follow up visit to ICU.

Results:
The patients only had partial memory of the time spent in ICU. The diary gave the patient an understanding of how sick they had been. The photographs together with the written information in the diary helped the patients to over come the time spent in ICU. The diary helped them to fill in their memory gaps. All patients have had unreal experiences from the hospital time. None of the patients could find any explanation to these experiences in their diary. During the follow up visit to ICU they experience that they got an understanding and an explanation too how sick they had been and that they got a possibility to discuss their unreal experiences during their time at ICU. They experienced that they had a need for discussing their unreal experiences with the staff from ICU and they found it meaningful and important to meet and discuss with the staff that had nursed them.

Conclusion:
The diary and the follow up visit can give the patients the possibility to fill in the memory gap they have and to get an explanation concerning their sickness and the symptoms they had after their discharge from the hospital. Without the follow up visit and the diary the patient can have problem or a hard time to understand what have happened to them and how sick they where an d why the recovery takes so long time.

Reference: 1. Griffiths, RD, Jones, C, Intensive Care Medicine 2001;27:344-346