Hola a tod@s, my dear friends.


Our recent trip to Oporto to the Jornadas de Medicina Intensiva da Primavera is giving the first fruits. We are extremely grateful to our Portuguese friends, who made us feel as at home and have been interested in the IC-HU Project massively.

Irene Aragão and Ana Guerra, from the ICU of the Hospital de Santo Antonio do Porto want to share with us their project AFTER ICU: the individual’s journey through critical care.


To do this, they conducted interviews with patients who had been admitted to their unit and wanted to share their experience of as survivors of a critical illness. They recorded video interviews in order to identify some of these aspects and their social context.

Here are 4 interviews in different circumstances about the daily life of a multi-purpose ICU.

The questionnaire submitted to all participants was the same:

a) Looking back on your life prior to your hospitalization, your experience in intensive care and how your daily life changed afterwards, what would you like to share with us regarding your “personal journey” throughout the critical illness that put your life at risk?

b) How do you look back now on your stay in intensive care?

c) How did you recover / are you recovering after this acute critical illness?

d) Is there something you would like to communicate to the general public about your experience, who might be any of us at any point in our lives, and that might be used as a testimony?

María Luisa: Cardiac arrest post-myocardial infarction
Hernani: Severe multiple trauma requiring support during long recovery period
María Fátima: Severe pneumonia with systemic expression of acute infectious disease 


Afonso: Trauma brain injury in a young man. 

The authors conclussions are the following:

Reflection upon these shared experiences might lead to a rethinking of the chain of care for the critical patient.

Improvements are needed all throughout the chain of care, from intensive care to both short and long term rehabilitation.

We all learn with personal journeys through the intensive care unit

Happy Saturday,
Gabi