Spending time in the intensive care unit can traumatize kidsSeptember 04, 2008Children who spend time in the intensive care unit of a hospital can be traumatized by the experience even months after returning home. Dr. Janet Rennick from the Research Institute of The Montreal Children's Hospital of the McGill University Health Centre and her colleagues have developed the Children's Critical Illness Impact Scale to measure psychological distress in children following hospital discharge. This is the first self-report scale ever created to measure the psychological impact of intensive care unit hospitalization on children. The Journal of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine recently published the study. This 23-item questionnaire provides a tool that will allow health care professionals to pick up on and recognize those children who need psychological support as a result of their hospital stay. It is based on the results of 64 interviews conducted with children who had been hospitalized in an intensive care unit, their parents, and health care professionals. The study was conducted across three Canadian pediatric hospitals. "We know some children suffer post traumatic stress symptoms after having spent time in the intensive care unit," explains Dr. Rennick, "Parents and children have described delusional memories of their hospital experience which continue to bother the child after they go home. In addition, parents have described behavioural changes and ongoing fears in their children, and children have told us they don't feel the same as they did before they were critically ill. This tells us something negative is going on with these children, but there was no way to capture the whole story since questionnaires had not been developed specifically for use with this population of children. As a result, we found that some kids were falling through the cracks and not getting the help needed to cope with the stress of hospitalization." Dr. Rennick and her colleagues decided to develop a questionnaire specifically for children aged six to 12 years. It was a challenging exercise because they had to find a way of interviewing children that would encourage and allow them to share their feelings and fears. The interviews were done in two ways, focus groups and individual interviews. For younger children, researchers used a storyboard with felt pieces and hospital play sets. The children were encouraged to use the felt pieces to tell a four part story about: being in the hospital, going home, going back to school, and returning to the hospital for a check up. "This interviewing method worked well for younger children who created detailed stories of their experiences But we discovered that the storyboard method was less effective for children 10 years and older. While it helped them focus on their hospital experiences, they didn't interact with the storyboard in the same way the younger children did. They would handle the felt pieces, and simply tell their story as we changed the storyboards," says Dr. Rennick. Dr. Rennick believes this child friendly, self-report questionnaire will allow health care workers to more effectively determine if children are bouncing back after an intensive care unit stay. "With this new scale we will be better able to pick-up and help the child whose life simply hasn't returned to normal." McGill University Health Centre |
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| Related Intensive Care Current Events and Intensive Care News Articles Government's NHS Plan linked to striking improvements in critical care Survival among patients in intensive care units in England has improved significantly since the implementation of the NHS Plan in 2000, finds new research published on bmj.com today. Mechanical ventilation for patients with lung damage don't always work as planned As more Canadians are diagnosed with H1N1 influenza infection, some will be admitted to hospital. The most severely affected may be treated in the intensive care unit (ICU) and placed on a mechanical ventilator to help them breathe while they recover from the infection. Researchers mobilizing global resources to test new treatments for severe H1N1 infection An important, ground-breaking initiative is unfolding in the global critical care community in response to the H1N1 pandemic. U.S. and European Experts Applaud Creation of New Transatlantic Task Force on Global Antibiotic Resistance Threat Experts on both sides of the Atlantic applaud President Barack Obama and Swedish Prime Minister Fredrik Reinfeldt, representing the European Union (EU) Presidency, for establishing a transatlantic task force to address antibiotic resistance, an urgent and growing problem that threatens patient safety and public health worldwide. Initial Results Show Pregnant Women Mount Strong Immune Response To One Dose of 2009 H1N1 Flu Vaccine Healthy pregnant women mount a robust immune response following just one dose of 2009 H1N1 influenza vaccine, according to initial results from an ongoing clinical trial sponsored by the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases (NIAID) of the National Institutes of Health. Muscle weakness a common side effect of long stays in intensive care units After decades of focusing on the management of respiratory failure, circulatory shock and severe infections that lead to extended stays in hospital intensive care units, critical care researchers are increasingly turning attention to what they believe is a treatable complication developed by many who spend days or weeks confined to an ICU bed: debilitating muscle weakness that can linger long after hospital discharge. Stanford study recommends change in treating pulmonary embolisms William Kuo, MD, was the on-call interventional radiologist one Friday night three years ago when he received a call from the intensive care unit at Stanford Hospital & Clinics. Treating ROP in tiny preemies; better glaucoma follow-up in urban clinic Highlights of today's Scientific Program of the 2009 American Academy of Ophthalmology (AAO) - Pan-American Association of Ophthalmology (PAAO) Joint Meeting include: John T. Flynn, MD, Columbia University School of Medicine, discussing the ever-tougher challenges Eye M.D.s face in caring for the vision of the tiniest premature babies; and a report by Bradford W. Lee, MD, Stanford University School of Medicine, on barriers to glaucoma follow-up as perceived by patients in an urban, culturally diverse clinic. Patients in US 5 times more likely to spend last days in ICU than patients in England Patients who die in the hospital in the United States are almost five times as likely to have spent part of their last hospital stay in the ICU than patients in England. U-M researchers find those with severe H1N1 at risk for pulmonary emboli University of Michigan researchers have found that patients with severe cases of the H1N1 virus are at risk for developing severe complications, including pulmonary emboli, according to a study published today in the American Journal of Roentgenology. More Intensive Care Current Events and Intensive Care News Articles |
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