INVESTIGATION OF INTENSIVE CARE EXPERIENCES OF THE PATIENTS

Aim: this research is a descriptive study which has been carried out to investigate experiences lived by the patients in intensive care unit and the factors that affect these experiences. method: this research was carried out between the date of january 2008 and august 2008. the sample of the study consisted of 76 patients who were admitted to the coronary intensive care units and the intensive care units of the thoracic and cardiovascular surgery of the two different university hospital in aegean zone, who transferred to the clinic after staying at least 24 hours in the intensive care unit. in collecting the data, the information form related to the socio-demographic characteristics and the intensive care experience scale which has been developed by rattray et al (2004) and studied reliability and validity of the turkish version by demir et al (2009) were used. results: the mean age of the patients in the study was 54.3±11.5, 53.9% of them were men, 72.4% were married, and 34.2% were primary school graduates. it was determined that 52.6% of the patients had ventilated during their stay in the intensive care unit, their duration of stay in the intensive care unit were 3.5±1.4 days. it was found that the total scale score was 57.7±5.5, there was a decreasing in the lived negative experiences while the patient’s age increased (p<0.05) and the intensive care experiences of the patients who were married (p<0.001) and ventilated during their stay in the intensive care unit were more negatively (p<0,05). conclusion: at the end of the study, it was determined that the patients in the intensive care units lived negative experiences partly. in addition, it was found that the patients, who were young, married and received mechanical ventilator lived more negative experiences.