Background:The COVID-19 pandemic has been associated with an unprecedentednumber of critical care survivors. Their experiences through illness and recovery arelikely to be complex, but little is known about how best to support them. This studyaimed to explore experiences of illness and recovery from the perspective of survi-vors, their relatives and professionals involved in their care.Study design:In-depth qualitative interviews were conducted with three stakeholdergroups during the first wave of the pandemic. A total of 23 participants (12 profes-sionals, 6 survivors and 5 relatives) were recruited from 5 acute hospitals in Englandand interviewed by telephone or video call. Data analysis followed the principles ofReflexive Thematic Analysis.Findings:Three themes were generated from their interview data: (1) Deterioratingfast—a downhill journey from symptom onset to critical care; (2) Facing a new virusin a hospital—a remote place; and (3) Returning home as a survivor, maintaining nor-mality and recovering slowly.Conclusions:Our findings highlight challenges in accessing care and communicationbetween patients, hospital staff and relatives. Following hospital discharge, patientsadopted a reframed‘survivor identity’to cope with their experience of illness andslow recovery process. The concept of survivorship in this patient group may be ben-eficial to promote and explore further.Relevance to clinical practice:All efforts should be made to continue to improvecommunication between patients, relatives and health professionals during criticalcare admissions, particularly while hospital visits are restricted. Adapting to life aftercritical illness may be more challenging while health services are restricted by theimpacts of the pandemic. It may be beneficial to promote the concept of survivorship,following admission to critical care due to severe COVID-19.
Gonçalves, Ana-CarolinaWilliams, Annabel Koulouglioti, ChristinaLeckie, ToddHunter, AlexanderFitzpatrick, DanielRichardson, AlanHardy, BenjaminVenn, RichardHodgson, Luke
Department of Sport, Health Sciences and Social Work
Year of publication: 2022Date of RADAR deposit: 2022-10-19