[Experience of patients in the intensive care unit. A qualitative study]

How patients experience their stay in the Intensive Care Unit is often not discernible externally. The patients are frequently sedated and in such a life-threatening condition that they cannot express their experiences in this situation. Observation of the patients during their stay in ICU lends little to understanding their experiences. What one perceives from the outside can differ greatly from that which the patients experience themselves. Therefore, in this study, the patients were interviewed about their experiences several weeks to months after their release from the hospital. In this way, the patients could describe their perceptions from their own perspectives and thus be better understood. For this purpose the methodology of narrative interview was chosen so that the former patients could talk freely about what they experienced during their stay in ICU. Two of the interviews were completely analysed sequentially. The remaining interviews were used for purposes of comparison. The results of this study are the dimensions, which describe the experiences of patients in Intensive Care Units. The first dimension describes the experience of losses of memory, orientation impairment, and dreams. These experiences are closely related to outside influences, which could help to reconstruct the lost time and regain orientation, for example the reports of relatives. The second dimension represents how ill or healthy the patients considered themselves, and how much understanding they showed for their being treated in the ICU. The third dimension, which can be considered of overriding importance, outlines the patients' trust in relatives, the nursing staff and doctors.