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Rapid Responses: Rapid Responses published:
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![[Read Rapid Response]](/icons/misc/sectionDOWN.gif)
Patients' experiences of intensive care
- Suman B Prinjha (18 April 2007)
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Resource for intensive care patients and relatives
- Lisa E Hinton, OX3 7LF (18 April 2007)
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The elephant in the room
- Anthony N Glaser (23 April 2007)
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A patient`s journey
- Rodríguez Llerena Belkys (28 April 2007)
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Dermatologist in critical care
- Laxmisha Chandrashekar (19 August 2007)
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Suman B Prinjha, qualitative researcher DIPEx Research Group, Department of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford, Oxford OX3 7LF
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Thank you for sharing your experiences of being a patient in intensive care and the effects of this experience on your life three years on from being in hospital. It was an extremely moving and insightful account, and I wondered if you’d come across the DIPEX website. Interviews on the experiences of ICU patients from across the UK are available freely at www.dipex.org/intensivecare . I was the researcher on the DIPEx project and, between 2005 and 2007, conducted 78 in-depth interviews across the UK with ICU patients, their relatives and close friends. I am writing to tell you more about this work in the hope that it might be of help to other people who have been in intensive care, their families and to health professionals. The interviews with patients aim to help people who may be asking questions about their own stay in an ICU and about the experiences of others. On the website 40 men and women from across the UK talk about their physical and emotional experiences in ICU, HDU and on a general ward. They discuss the treatments and care they received, their physical and emotional recovery at home and the effects of their illness or injuries on their daily lives. 25 main topics from the interviews are illustrated with extracts in written, audio and video format. The DIPEx intensive care site also links patients’ experiences with evidence-based information and with a range of other useful resources, including support groups and links to other websites. The research was conducted by the DIPEx Research Group, based at the Department of Primary Health Care, University of Oxford. DIPEx (www.dipex.org) is a free online resource for the general public, health professionals and researchers that is based on research involving one-to- one interviews with people talking about the issues that are most important to them. The intensive care projects were funded by the Intensive Care National Audit and Research Centre (ICNARC). The project on the experiences of family and close friends of ICU patients will be available later this year. Dr. Suman Prinjha. Qualitative Researcher. sbprinjha@hotmail.com Competing interests: None declared |
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Lisa E Hinton, Graduate Student Department of Primary Care, University of Oxford, OX3 7LF
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Readers may like to know of a resource for patients who have been in intensive care and their relatives. The Dipex (Directory of Individual Patient Experiences)Research Group at the University of Oxford publishes a website of patients experiences of health and illness. There is a module on intensive care (http://www.dipex.org/intensivecare) where you can read and watch interviews with patients of all ages talking about their experiences. Competing interests: None declared |
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Anthony N Glaser, Family physician Summerville, South Carolina, USA
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The elephant in the room in this sad story is the almost unbelievable failure of a large number of doctors to make the most obvious and elementary connection between the patient's symptoms - most notably the rash - and the use of sulfasalazine. I would hope any medical student would at least have generated a hypothesis that the drug was the culprit. The most cursory glance at sulfasalazine's known risks would have raised severe suspicions. Unless the patient simply did not tell anyone that she was taking sulfasalazine, I find this failure inexcusable. What can be the explanation for this disaster of misdiagnosis and mistreatment? Competing interests: None declared |
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Rodríguez Llerena Belkys, MD (intensive care) Cienfuegos,Cuba PC: 10600 we have
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I was reading your interesting article "A patients journey". In our daily practice we have difficult situations, cases with unclear diagnosis and rising expectations of the family about our medical decisions. I am a doctor and I have been working for 20 years in an Intensive Care Unit in the University Hospital "Dr. Gustavo Aldereguía Lima" in Cienfuegos, Cuba, and I can say some things in our experience: We most not forget to obtain all the clues related to any sickness, asking
the patient or the family all the questions that can lead us to the
diagnosis and listening to all the details.
Competing interests: None declared |
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Laxmisha Chandrashekar, lecturer Christian medical College, Vellore
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This is a real sad story. The lady started having a rash in the first week of November and was seen by a dermatologist on 24th.No one seems to have appreciated her rash and skin tenderness. Just a simple referral to a dermatologist would have solved her problems.Dermatologists have an important role in critcal care situations facilitating early diagnosis(rash of meningococcaemia, adverse drug reactions, ecthyma gangrenosum etc). I hope this case will be an eye opener for critical care teams. Competing interests: None declared |
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