The relatives’ experiences with patients in the Intensive Care Unit

Abstract

Introduction: the patient’s admission to the intensive care unit has consequences on their relatives that need to be studied to improve quality’s attention.The care and human reiponses are objets of study of the nursing profesional, however they’ve been focused on the patient in an individual way leaving apart the relatives.

Objective: to know the experiences of patients’ relatives in the adult intensive care unit.

Methodology: qualitative study, phenomenological perspective, which was performed on a third level attention hospital. Study population were relatives with patients admitted in the Adult Intensive Care Unit; volunteer sample was chosen (auto – selected sample of qualitative studies, the number of participants were limited when data saturation was reached). We used the semi structured interview and for the analysis it was used the software MAXQDA (Qualitative Data Analysis Software for Mac and Windows).

Findings: the relatives show changes in dynamic of life as personal neglect, economic instability and social interaction changes, they show negative feelings because of the patient’s admission to the intensive care unit and their expectations are related to information, dignified behavior and effective medical care.