Month: June 2020

Walking From ICU Episode 46 Waking Up After Decades of Sedation

Walking Home From The ICU Episode 46: Waking Up After Decades of Sedation

What is like for a seasoned ICU nurse with decades of valuable experience to completely change their sedation practices? What is like to then re-enter a “normal” environment and strive to continue the best practice? Paula shares with us her personal shock and conversion. Episode Transcription Kali Dayton 0:28 Hello, and welcome back. New listeners,

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Walking From ICU Episode 45 Physical Therapy In the ICU During COVID19

Walking Home From The ICU Episode 45: Physical Therapy In the ICU During COVID19

What roles do physical and occupational play in helping COVID19 patients survive and thrive? How have they changed their approaches during the challenges of COVID19? Why should we never remove their therapies from ICU care? Episode Transcription Kali Dayton 0:28 When COVID-19 came our way with concerns about isolation, patient load, and PPE immediately physical

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Walking From ICU Episode 44 Walking Home From the ICU after COVID19

Walking Home From The ICU Episode 44: Walking Home From the ICU after COVID19

When 69-year-old Dr. Ken Hurwitz was intubated for COVID19, how was his life saved and even preserved? After 3 weeks on the ventilator, why was he able to walk away and go straight home? Episode Transcription Kali Dayton 0:28 In the past few episodes, we learned about the conditions, treatments and outcomes experienced during the

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Over the last few years I have become aware of the PICS (post-intensive care syndrome) condition and the very serious negative impact that it has on our ICU survivors. I have become much more aware of the potential negative impact of anxiety, depression, PTSD and cognitive dysfunction. Many patients whom we consider saves in the sense they leave the ICU alive have many issues that most people would consider far from a successful experience. Their lives are often dramatically changed in a very negative fashion.

I am a professor of medicine and have been an ICU director for over forty years. What I find very disturbing in my own experience and that of many other intensivists is that this outcome is generally considered acceptable; the patient survived and will get better with time. We have little access to these patients and almost zero information about their condition unless they are unfortunate enough to return to our ICUs. Very few of us have a PICS clinic where we would have a chance to better understand the challenges that some of our patients encounter, and there are very few systems in place to provide feedback to us as ICU clinicians. Therefore, we are blissfully ignorant of the many challenges that a substantial number of our survivors encounter. This is a major problem. The vast majority of ICU survivors and their families will experience cognitive, emotional and physical symptoms which often have devastating impacts on their lives. At this time, with PICS clinics being a rarity, there is no reasonable mechanism for intensivists to have a solid perspective on the frequency and severity of this condition.

How patients and their families are treated in the ICU often has a major impact on how the patient and families survive post discharge. It is generally agreed that most sedation infusions, particularly benzodiazepines, frequently have higher incidences of delirium and post-discharge dysfunction. There are a few hospitals in this country where sedative infusions are rarely used and the incidence of the complications described above are dramatically decreased. I have visited one of these hospitals and was amazed to see how effectively patients on maximum ventilator support can be managed, even walking without sedative infusions. In an effort to explore this treatment option in greater detail I have identified Kali Dayton. She is a nurse practitioner who has practiced in this Awake and Walking ICU for many years and is an amazing source of information on this topic. After extensive discussion with many colleagues, administration and many others, and reviewing the major potential benefits of the program for our patients, we have decided to introduce this program into our hospital.

Peter J. Murphy, MD, FCCP, MRCPI, BSc

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