Studies in hospitalized patients have shown that a large percentage of them consider religion or spirituality to be an important factor in enabling them to cope with a serious illness. Studies conducted in the ICU, have shown that spiritual care from a chaplain/priest is associated with increased satisfaction in family members of critically ill patients, however, the focus has traditionally been on offering support to family members and not to patients. Interventions for critically ill patients have mostly been implemented by chaplains or a member of the health care team, primarily nurses. Although these studies show promising results in terms of quality of life, they mostly reflect the perspective of the health teams and not that of the patients, they are not evaluated with standardized instruments and, in general, they are not standardized strategies.
Given that this will be one of the first studies with patients who received care in the ICU, it is proposed to conduct a pilot and feasibility study to gather lessons to implement a larger study. Studies of this type place greater emphasis on evaluating the feasibility of implementing the intervention and therefore this study will seek to: (1) evaluate the feasibility of implementing the intervention in a hospital setting, including participant recruitment procedures; (2) evaluate how the intervention, format and manner of implementation is received by participants; (3) preliminarily evaluate the impact on psychological symptomatology associated with PICS at the end of the intervention, at 3 and 6 months post-intervention.
Showing the impact of spiritual care on health outcomes of individuals, through studies such as this one, may contribute to a paradigm shift from a biomedical perspective to a holistic view of ICU patients. Although the technological and advanced life support offered by the ICU is essential for critical patients, but survival of a severe disease without a good quality of life makes it necessary to seek strategies to improve this problem, which undoubtedly requires a comprehensive approach to the person, through medical-physiological care and spiritual care.
Patient who has had at least 72 hours of Invasive Mechanical Ventilation
Patient currently in ICU
Glasgow 15 at the moment of the screening
Patient who required mechanical ventilation in another episode of hospitalization in the 2 months before screening.
Patients with primary neurological or neurosurgical disease.
Presence of mental or intellectual disability prior to hospitalization or communication/language barriers.
Pre-existing comorbidity with a life expectancy not exceeding 6 months (eg, metastatic cancer).