For hospitals For healthcare staff About PICS About Post-ICU Demo Open the digital journal

More rapid recovery with Post-ICU, the digital journal for tomorrow.

Going into an Intensive Care Unit (ICU) is a traumatic experience both for the patients and for their families. It is easier to process this period if a journal is kept throughout their stay by the patient, family members and healthcare professionals. Would you like to request Post-ICU for your hospital? Please call Jurriaan van Rijswijk, founder of Games for Health, at +31681150578 or send an email to our helpdesk on hospital@post-icu.com.

Keeping a journal during the time spent in the ICU really helps to come to terms with it. Because my husband wrote about what was happening, I was able to read it later and see where the images in my head had come from.

Daphne Bolman, experience expert and ambassador for the Post-ICU journal. She spent three weeks in an extended sleep in the ICU and was able to reconstruct and deal with this period with the help of a journal.

Looking back at the ICU period.

Many former ICU patients have no clear memories of being admitted. Memories are fragmented and do not reflect reality. The journal provides a narrative of what exactly happened and helps to restore self-confidence in their own abilities.

A bird’s eye view of the Post-ICU journal.

The reasons

In The Netherlands on average each year, about 85,000 people are admitted into an Intensive Care Unit. A radical event, with a constant flow of new information, and a situation that is continually changing. There may also be a black hole if the patient was unconscious during admission. This can lead to physical and psychological problems after admission. This is known as PICS: Post Intensive Care Syndrome.

Learn more about PICS

Emergency

Luckily there is a solution that will reduce the symptoms: for the patient, their family members and healthcare staff to keep a shared journal. An offline journal was used previously in the ICU at the Catharina Hospital (a leading hospital in Eindhoven), but it was difficult to share with family members and healthcare staff.

The answer

The symptoms that come from time spent in an ICU can continue for a long time. These might be problems with concentration, mood swings and loss of muscular strength. Having a reliable record of the events during admission helps to process this period after returning home. It means that the time of uncertainty becomes easier to bear after the event.

Writing in the journal

It is simple for either the patient or a family member to create the journal once they have received the envelope and the personal journal code. Once the journal has been set up, family members, friends and healthcare staff can all write in the journal. They deliberately share in this time and help the patient by describing events from their own point of view.

Journal for the patient

A healthcare professional hands the envelope to the patient or their advocate. It contains a personal journal code that can be used to set up the journal. The journal is then used to record what happens and how things change.

Allow family members and healthcare staff to join in

Invite other people to also write in the journal. Thanks to their contributions, the patient will have an even clearer picture of their admission so they can make more sense of the period that follows.

Going home

After a major physical and mental battle, the patient is back home. The pages of the journal offer support in the recovery process and help the patient to get a clearer picture of their time in the ICU.