How ICU stays affect patients' wellbeing and trauma recovery

This research is studying how stays in intensive care affect patients' emotional and physical wellbeing after they go home. Researchers know that some people develop post-traumatic stress after intensive care, and they want to understand what experiences during the stay — like memory gaps — influence whether patients struggle with anxiety or stress afterward. By learning more about these connections, hospitals hope to design better ways to help patients remember and process their time in intensive care.

Many patients who survive serious illness and spend time in intensive care develop anxiety, stress, or trauma-related symptoms that harm their quality of life. Early research suggests that memory gaps during the stay and lack of understanding about what happened contribute to this problem. This trial exists to measure exactly how the intensive care experience affects patients so that hospitals can develop better tools — like patient diaries or journals — to reduce these harmful effects.