Interview Section : Healthtalkonline

Full list of topics

Reasons for admission :
Emergency admissions
Planned admissions

In the Intensive Care Unit (ICU) :
Seeing the patient in ICU for the first time
Suspending normal routines: visiting ICU every day
Uncertainty
Emotional impact on relatives & friends in ICU
Impact on children
Telling others
Relationships within and between families
Receiving information and news from doctors
Sources of information in ICU
Nursing care
Keeping a diary
Sources of support in ICU
At the bedside:
- Waiting for news
- Signs of improvement and progress
The relatives' room and overnight accommodation:
- The relatives' room
- Overnight accommodation

When someone dies :
End of life decisions
Death and bereavement:

On a general ward :
The ward environment and nursing care
Hospital discharge and rehabilitation

Life after leaving the hospital :
Supporting and caring for the ill person at home
Impact on work and finances
Attitudes to life after the hospital experience
Messages to others
Emotional impact on relatives and carers
- Emotional impact on family and friends
- Adjusting to a changed life
Support and information
- Support and information
- Lack of support and information

Search the whole site
Search in this condition

Intensive care: experiences of family & friends

People's stories

Aged 30 & under

Interview 06

Interview 06

Age at Interview: 28
Sex: Male
Background: Accounts assistant, single, no children. Ethnic background/nationality: British Asian.

Brief outline:In May 2006 his father was admitted to ICU because of pneumonia and was still in hospital at the time of interview.

More about me...

To watch or read an interview clip, click on the heading that interests you. Either a video,audio recording or text will open, depending on the clip

To close transcript boxes, click here
To print the interview’s text, click here

His father went to hospital with stomach pains but when he developed pneumonia he was transferred to ICU.
Print Well, it started, I mean he's had a history of stomach problems before. So he got some stomach pains and so we referred him to the doctor. And he referred us to the hospital. And then they had to operate on him because his bowels were blocked. So they did that. And because he had an operation before on the bowels, he's like had all this stuff inside his stomach. So they took, it was quite a big operation, it was about five hours, it was a five-hour operation. And from that he was struggling to breathe properly after the operation. So he got a bit of pneumonia on his lungs and stuff. So that's why he went into ICU. So just to make him breathe a bit better and hopefully to get rid of the pneumonia there as well. So he went there literally probably a couple of days, maybe three days after the operation. And then they took him down, I think we got a phone call about 11 o'clock at night saying they were going to take him down [to ICU]. And so we just went down there. And they took him. He wasn't very alert, he was quite unconscious at that time. But after, I think they put him on some really heavy oxygen stuff, and after a while, I think even overnight or maybe later on that day, he was looking a bit better.

Mail to a friend