Severely ill ICU patients recall of factual events and unreal experiences of hospital admission and ICU stay—3 and 12 months after discharge

Summary 

There is a lack of knowledge regarding how critically ill patients recall of the ICU and their life-threatening condition changes over time. The purpose of this study is to describe critically ill and ventilator-treated patients’ recollections of both factual events and unreal experiences at 3 and 12 months following discharge from the ICU. The study is qualitative and encompasses nine critically ill ICU patients, ventilator-treated for more than 72h. The participants were interviewed twice, at 3 and 12 months after their discharge from the ICU. The interviews were analysed using qualitative content analysis.

The patients in this study reported unreal experiences, memory confusion and/or disturbances before admittance to the ICU and before their respirator treatment. Their “unreal experiences” were far clearer than their memories of factual occurrences. Patients’ fragmentary memories of factual events and their recall of unreal experiences were practically unchanged after 12 month. Their unreal experiences could still be recalled and related after 12 months, but not with the same expression and feeling as earlier (3 months). The unreal experiences were not – after 12 months – their initial recollections, as they had been after 3 months. Conclusions: Patients’ recollections of both factual events and unreal experiences show very little variation between 3 and 12 months. The stability of long-term memory after 12 months shows that the recollection of their experiences had been both traumatic and emotionally charged. This study shows that critically ill patients were affected by cognitive disturbances and/or disturbed memory before their arrival at the ICU. This result indicates the need of ICU follow-up clinics.

Keywords: Long-term, ICU, Critically ill, Ventilator treatment, Follow-up, Memory, Recall, Hospital admission, Unreal experiences