Helping Seniors Recover After ICU Stays

November 9th, 2016

A stay in a hospital’s intensive care unit (ICU) is a serious health event in anyone’s life, but older patients are especially at risk for a decline in overall health after they are discharged from the ICU. To avoid decline, researchers recommend that families or caregivers prepare for recovery while patients are still in the ICU through communication with health care providers as the first step in recovery. “[Families or caregivers] should ask every day, ‘What’s the plan for today?’ Try to have a sit-down meeting with a physician within the first day of being in the ICU and then three to four days after,” says Douglas B. White, MD, UPMC Professor for Ethics in Critical Care Medicine, professor of medicine, and director of the Program on Ethics and Decision Making in Critical Illness, University of Pittsburgh School of Medicine. “Once life-threatening problems have been resolved, [families and caregivers should] start to ask doctors and nurses, ‘What can we do today to improve [the patient’s] function?’” Dr. White says. For more recovery tips, read more about the research.