Despite an international initiative to provide former intensive care unit patients with support groups, many hospitals are finding it difficult to persuade former patients to attend the meetings designed to help them recover, according to a STAT report.
Physicians speculate post-intensive care syndrome, or PICS, can result from a variety of factors, including the trauma of being placed on life support, returning home from the hospital with a disability and high-stakes interventions patients and their families may face during the rehabilitative process.
To provide care and support for patients with post-intensive care syndrome, the Society of Critical Care Medicine, a nonprofit group for ICU providers, donated $5,000 each to five hospitals to launch support groups in 2015, according to the report. There are currently 17 PICS support groups across the globe.
However, clinicians are reportedly struggling to motivate survivors and caregivers to attend the meetings.
Daniela J. Lamas, MD, a pulmonary and critical care physician at Boston-based Brigham and Women's Hospital, said part of the issue is survivors may not seek out resources for PICS because they may not know such support groups exist.
"We've had trouble getting a lot of people to come on a regular basis. … For people to even look online for a support group assumes a level of knowledge about post-ICU that doesn't really exist among laypeople," Dr. Lamas said. "People [also] don't necessarily define themselves as survivors of the ICU."
But some patients have expressed the need for ICU physicians to provide information on where they may receive help and talk about their experience in a safe setting once discharged.
Rob Rainer, now 54, said he spent roughly two months in the ICU at a New Hampshire-based hospital in 2015 after being hospitalized for pneumonia. He said once he arrived home, he had difficulty moving and speaking, which he attributed to oxygen depreciation during his stay in the ICU, according to the report.
"I started to realize the circumstances I was going to have to live in because of my experience [in the ICU]," said Mr. Rainer. "There was no resource for me to go to talk about some of the things I didn't understand. … If not for [the PICS support group], I might very well still be struggling to understand what the heck was, is, and will be wrong with me. It's critical for ICU staff at every hospital to be well-versed in PICS to prepare patients."
To read the full report, click here.