Nursing in critical care
Sense of Coherence in Patients After Intensive Care Treatment: A 1-Year Follow-Up Cohort Study
By Austenå M, Rustøen T, Hagen MC and 3 others.
Abstract
Background
Patients endure physical, mental and cognitive symptoms after critical illness, and coping is vital to their healing process. Little research exists on associations between sense of coherence (SOC) and patients' health improvements after intensive care unit (ICU) discharge.
Aims
To describe the trajectory of SOC and how demographic, clinical and psychosocial variables affect SOC in discharged ICU patients during 12 months of follow-up.
Study design
A prospective cohort substudy of a neutral randomized controlled trial in Norway involving discharged ICU patients receiving nurse-led follow-up consultations or standard care. Data were collected in the ward (baseline) and after 3, 6 and 12 months. Univariate and multivariate linear mixed models for repeated measures were fitted with SOC-13 score as the dependent variable.