Lost days--diaries for military intensive care patients.

There is a real possibility of critically injured service personnel suffering from psychological disturbance as a result of not being able to recall traumatic events. Many patients report symptoms of depression, anxiety and other psychological disturbances such as hallucinations, delusional memories and nightmares after discharge from an Intensive Care Unit (ICU). Patients who have memories of ICU, sometimes unpleasant ones, as opposed to those who have no memories of their stay in ICU, suffer less anxiety, panic attacks and other PTSD-related symptoms. The impact for clinical practice is that, whilst health care professionals cannot remove all of the stressors of treatment in ICU for service personnel, we must try to minimise their impact by providing continued patient information and reassurance. The introduction of patient diaries has helped this vulnerable group of patients and the feedback from patients and their relatives validates this. Patient diaries have been developed and introduced for use by military patients and further exploration of their impact expected.