Patient’s experience at the intensive care unit in tertiary hospital, Malaysia

INTRODUCTION AND OBJECTIVES The critically ill needs advanced support to prevent complications and survive. Critical care nurses have a pivotal role in identifying traumatic experiences of their patients. Patients may experience either pleasant or unpleasant memories during their stay at ICU. Unpleasant experiences can affect patients and later lead to negative consequences. This study aimed to explore the experiences of stay at the ICU among ICU survivors. METHODOLOGY This study was conducted in 2015 and used general wards of three hospitals in Malaysia (Hospital Tengku Ampuan Afzan, Kuantan, Pahang, Hospital Raja Permaisuri Bainun, Ipoh, Perak and Hospital Taiping, Taiping, Perak). By using the formula from Yamane (1973), 142 samples were recruited based on the discharge rate from the ICU of the selected hospitals. The participants were selected after met the criteria; discharged from the ICU at least 24 hours to 2 weeks, stayed in ICU at least for 2 days, age from 18 to 64, discharged from ICU with full conscious level, understand Malay language, and willing tom participate. All participants who are agree to take part in this study have to answer the open ended questions developed by the researcher, which comprises 4 domains, namely awareness of surroundings, frightening experiences, recall of experiences, and satisfaction with care. RESULTS Recruitment rate for this study was 100% with total 142 samples. Been stay in ICU give negative experienced to the participants. It was proven when 46 (32.4%) of participants claimed felt helpless, felt like dying, or felt scared when seeing scary creatures like shadows, having nightmares, progress of illnesses, and some procedures in ICU. Furthermore, they claimed not aware about people, place and time during their stay and the reason was they were in massive pain caused by the illness 54 (38%). This study also revealed that participants remembered the most about seeing scary thing 20 (14.1%), heard loud sound from machines 14 (10%), and feeling pain 12 (8.5%). Thirty five (24.6%) participants rate nightmares as the most frightened events or moments in ICU. However, despite of scary moments, 11 (7.7%) participants remembered that the loudness in ICU did make them felt happy including the staffs as well as the environment. There are 70 (50.7%) participants claimed they felt safe with the presence of family members, and the sense of familiarity was the reason behind it. Regarding sleeping patterns, around 97 (68.3%) participants claimed they had enough sleep. More than half participants (62.7%) claimed that they received good services and claimed that the staffs were kind, diligently doing their works, and delivered the best services to the patients. CONCLUSION Final result shown that majority of ICU survivors felt satisfy with the services provided in the ICU and half of them claimed they were aware about the surrounding especially about the family members. This study also revealed that more than half of participant able to recall about having enough sleep and rest