Giving patient’s their voice back

When we think about the basic needs for human survival, food, water and shelter are likely to be the first three things that come to mind. We don’t often think about how important communicating is to our mental health and well-being; until we no longer have the ability to do so.

When Anna-Liisa Sutt first started working in the ICU at The Prince Charles Hospital, she worked most closely with tracheostomy patients. Through the process of their surgeries, these patients have lost their ability to speak, leading to immense frustrations, depression, and social withdrawal. Enter Anna-Liisa’s research: the speaking valve.

This small, yet important, piece of plastic is used alongside the tracheostomy. Its placement redirects exhaled air back to the vocal cords and returns the patients ability to talk – giving the patient back an important form of expression and communication. Throughout the study, Anna-Liisa noticed an increase in the overall mood of her ICU tracheostomy patients who were fitted with speaking valves. It’s an inexpensive piece of equipment that has an extremely valuable outcome for patients, their families and their healthcare team.

Thanks to the work Anna-Liisa has done into this area of research, every tracheostomy patient at The Prince Charles Hospital is considered for a speaking valve. Her study has also had such a positive response nationally and internationally that Australia’s main manufacturer of the valves has had some trouble keeping up with the demand! It’s an amazing result to help patients worldwide who are already going through a particularly challenging period.

Protecting the mental state of critically ill patients

Intensive care units (ICU) are amazing places. They are for saving the lives of the sickest of the sick where every moment is a matter of life and death.

The ICU space itself however, can feel like being in the middle of a war zone. Alarms, bright artificial lights, beeping machines, high anxiety and distressed relatives… The impact of this to ICU patients over a week or more—of stress, sleep deprivation and strange surroundings—can lead to ICU Delirium and in many cases ongoing mental health concerns such as post-traumatic stress.

Delirium is a serious condition that results in an acute change in the mental state of critically ill patients, with disturbances to their consciousness, attention, cognition and perception. Symptoms can include terrifying hallucinations or having delusions that staff are trying to harm them.

That’s why Oystein Tronstad and his team at the Critical Care Research Group are creating an ICU space that concentrates on the well-being of the patient, including both their physical condition and their emotional and mental health. The patient’s experience will be at the centre of an innovative bed space design, or ‘Cocoon’, that infuses technology and personalised medicine with best practice architectural and engineering solutions to improve clinical efficiencies.

An optimal ICU design can improve patient outcomes, decrease the length of stay, reduce the rate of preventable complications, and lower health care costs. Considering that ICU patients aged over 60 have an 80 percent chance of developing delirium, it is hoped the “ICU of the Future” will revolutionise patient care.

To help translate the prototype of this incredible concept into operational ICU bedspaces, please donate now.