Guilt, flashbacks, anxiety: intensive care work is brutal, but you can help | Dr Hugh Montgomery
As an appeal is launched to boost support, counselling and education for ICU workers, one doctor describes how they strive to save lives
For many, working in an intensive care unit (ICU) was brutal enough before Covid-19. The job requires enormous concentration and attention to detail. We deal with the most complex diseases and sickest patients, and we live with the uncertainty over whether they will survive - and guilt over whether we made the right decisions.
Normally, between 20% and 30% of patients admitted to ICU will die. Families can be very distressed when seeing their loved ones suffer, and absorbing that distress or anger can be hard for our staff. Understandably, some families insist on ICU care when we know that this will cause suffering and the outcome will be poor. This leads to moral burnout: staff are forced to do things which they would not want done to themselves or a relative.
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