Improving Patient & Family-Centred Care in ICU
The ESICM seeks to improve patient and family-centred care in the intensive care environment in partnership with patients, families and multi-professional teams.
To achieve this goal, we are seeking to involve patients and/or their family members in the VITAL project with the support of Intensive Care professionals.
“VITAL” is so named as without the partnership and expertise of ex-patients and their families, we cannot improve practices, tools and guidelines across the speciality to improve the care we deliver.
We are looking to recruit patient and/or family member volunteers:
- with significant experience in the ICU, i.e. with an ICU stay of at least 4 days;
- who can express themselves clearly in English;
- who have a constructive critical mindset regarding the experience and attitude when reflecting on their experiences;
- who have the ability to distance themselves from their own ICU experience and to transfer experience to other care settings – ICU stay must have been experienced one year ago or more (not less);
- who demonstrate a desire to help people, contribute to a goal beyond their own experience of the ICU, and be involved with other patients or family members.
Participants will represent the voice of the patients and families ICU clinicians care for.
Here is an overview of the activities we will develop together:
- Participation in clinician training by sharing lived experiences to promote effective learning and boost staff morale, ensuring activities remain person-centred.
- Participation in the identification of aspects of care to be considered.
- Validation of tools developed by the ESICM (info-educative tools).
- Involvement in guideline development.
- Begin exploration of how a peer support group/network may work.
All work meetings will be held via Zoom, in English.
Meetings will be held 3 times a year and more often if necessary or wanted.
