Skip to main content
  • Poster presentation
  • Open access
  • Published:

Recognition of the primary stressors affecting intensive care patients: a systematic review

Introduction

Intensive care patients suffer psychological and physiological distress that may have debilitating and long-lasting effects [1–3]. Healthcare professionals are in a position to help avoid or alleviate this stress [4]. To action this it is important to identify the main stressors from the patient's perspective. A systematic review was performed to provide a list of what patients consider stressors in intensive care. These were then ranked in order to provide an identification tool that can be used to shape appropriate care.

Methods

A systematic review was performed using MEDLINE, CINAHL, Psych INFO and Academic Search Complete. Grey literature was included and searches were not restricted to type of intensive care or country. Criteria were used to filter those articles that identified the patients' views of their stressor, not the patient experience. Eligible articles were critiqued using the Critical Appraisal Skills Programme for qualitative studies [5] and brought together using a narrative synthesis. All of the reviewed studies used a questionnaire as a means to identify what elements on the intensive care patients found stressful. A list of the top-10 stressors could then be expressed for each study and compared. From this information, a set of guidelines for best practice were devised.

Results

A total 1,424 articles were systematically assessed for suitability and applicability. Of these, 14 articles remained eligible for review. The stressors were ranked by their frequency in the individual studies' top-10 lists. In rank order: 1, Tubes. 2, Pain. 3, Sleep Difficulties. 4, Thirst. 5, Lack of Patient Understanding. Overall, stressors were found to be similar throughout all of the studies.

Conclusion

The review identified a list of the most pertinent common stressors. Awareness of these and ranking in priority may enable plans of care to be instigated to effectively alleviate patient stress.

References

  1. Jones C, et al.: Clin Intensive Care. 1998, 9: 199-205.

    Article  Google Scholar 

  2. Scragg P, et al.: Anaesthesia. 2001, 56: 9-14. 10.1046/j.1365-2044.2001.01714.x

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  3. Perrins J, et al.: Intensive Crit Care Nurs. 1998, 14: 108-116. 10.1016/S0964-3397(98)80351-0

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  4. Ballard KS: Issues Ment Health Nurs. 1981, 3: 89-108. 10.3109/01612848109140863

    Article  CAS  PubMed  Google Scholar 

  5. Public Health Resource Unit:Critical Appraisal Skills Programme 10 Questions to Help You Make Sense of Qualitative Research. [http://www.medev.ac.uk/static/uploads/workshop_resources/166/166_Qualitative_Appraisal_Tool.pdf]

Download references

Author information

Authors and Affiliations

Authors

Rights and permissions

This article is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License, which permits use, sharing, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons licence, and indicate if changes were made. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article's Creative Commons licence, unless indicated otherwise in a credit line to the material. If material is not included in the article's Creative Commons licence and your intended use is not permitted by statutory regulation or exceeds the permitted use, you will need to obtain permission directly from the copyright holder. To view a copy of this licence, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/. The Creative Commons Public Domain Dedication waiver (http://creativecommons.org/publicdomain/zero/1.0/) applies to the data made available in this article, unless otherwise stated in a credit line to the data.

Reprints and permissions

About this article

Cite this article

Birch, S., Elliot, S. Recognition of the primary stressors affecting intensive care patients: a systematic review. Crit Care 17 (Suppl 2), P542 (2013). https://doi.org/10.1186/cc12480

Download citation

  • Published:

  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1186/cc12480

Keywords