Minimizing the Negative Impact of the ICU

When a senior citizen has an extended stay in a hospital, particularly the intensive care unit (ICU), it can be a traumatic experience. Confusion, anger, and poor health are almost always consequences of time in the hospital. The older that someone is, the more detrimental an extended hospital stay can be. In some extreme cases, the hospital has created even more issues than it has resolved.

 

This is rare, but it doesn’t mean that your loved one is going to come out of the hospital in perfect health.

 

Luckily, there are a few things that can be done to help minimize the impact of a visit to the ICU. For example, you can visit them with regularity to help them feel like they are in a familiar and comfortable situation. Be sure to talk and interact with them as often as is appropriate for the situation that they are in. Encourage other friends and family members to do the same. When you are there with them, bring a comfort item or two with you. Eyeglasses or hearing aids can be helpful, along with an easy to see clock, a favorite blanket, family photographs, or other familiar items.

 

There are a few things that you can do to help minimize the negative impact of the ICU.

 

Another helpful tip is to keep a diary of when you go to visit and your loved one’s condition while you’re there. This is good for you because it helps you to make sure that they are recovering properly, but there’s another reason why this helps. When you’re in the ICU, it can be easy to lose track of time. When you’re elderly, this is exacerbated. Confusion is common even for those in the best of help. A diary can also be really helpful for your loved one. Studies have shown that this goes a long way toward reducing the stress and confusion that can be the result of an ICU stay. Reading through the diary can help them to reconcile the time that spent in the ICU and begin to make more sense of their time.

 

Don’t forget to stay in communication with hospital staff and doctors. There are a lot of things about your loved one that you might take for granted as common knowledge that the hospital does not know, but that could be very helpful for them, and vice versa. The only way to rectify this is to keep in touch with the hospital and ensure that communication occurs. Also, as a loved family member, you are a part of the care team. Don’t be afraid to speak up on your loved one’s behalf.

 

Sometimes, the elderly are impacted much more harshly by sedatives or anaesthesia. This can even lead to short term dementia. Typically, this disappears within a few days, but if not, then you need to be patient. There have been cases where this type of dementia can last for two weeks–it really all depends on the health of the person in question and why they were in the hospital. If this happens to your loved one and you are concerned, get in touch with their physician quickly.

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