‘A post-transplant person’: Narratives of heart or lung transplantation and intensive care unit delirium
- 11 September 2013
- journal article
- research article
- Published by SAGE Publications in Health: An Interdisciplinary Journal for the Social Study of Health, Illness and Medicine
- Vol. 18 (4), 352-368
- https://doi.org/10.1177/1363459313501356
Abstract
Exploring patients’ narratives can lead to new understandings about perceived illness states. Intensive Care Unit delirium is when people experience transitory hallucinations, delusions or paranoia in the Intensive Care Unit and little is known about how this experience affects individuals who have had a heart or lung transplant. A total of 11 participants were recruited from two heart and lung transplant services and were invited to tell their story of transplant and Intensive Care Unit delirium. A narrative analysis was conducted and the findings were presented as a shared story. This shared story begins with death becoming prominent before the transplant: ‘you live all the time with Mr Death on your shoulder’. Following the operation, death permeates all aspects of dream worlds, as dreams in intensive care ‘tunes into the subconscious of your fears’. The next part of the shared story offers hope of restitution; however, this does not last as reality creeps in: ‘I thought it was going to be like a miracle cure’. Finally, the restitution narrative is found to be insufficient and individuals differ in the extent to which they can achieve resolution. The societal discourse of a transplant being a ‘gift’, which gives life, leads to internalised responsibility for the ‘success’ or ‘failure’ of the transplant. Participants describe how their experiences impact their sense of self: ‘a post-transplant person’. The clinical implications of these findings are discussed.Keywords
This publication has 36 references indexed in Scilit:
- Delirium in the intensive care unit: a reviewNursing in Critical Care, 2009
- Psychiatric Aspects of Organ Transplantation in Critical CareCritical Care Clinics, 2008
- Developing narrative research in supportive and palliative care: the focus on illness narrativesPalliative Medicine, 2008
- Doing Narrative ResearchPublished by SAGE Publications ,2008
- Posttraumatic Stress Disorder Caused by Hallucinations and Delusions Experienced in DeliriumPsychosomatics, 2007
- The meaning of posttraumatic stress-reactions following critical illness or injury and intensive care treatmentIntensive and Critical Care Nursing, 2007
- Liver transplant patients: their experience in the intensive care unit. A phenomenological studyJournal of Clinical Nursing, 2004
- Delirium as a Predictor of Mortality in Mechanically Ventilated Patients in the Intensive Care UnitPublished by American Medical Association (AMA) ,2004
- User involvement in research: power and compromiseJournal of Community & Applied Social Psychology, 2001
- Delirium in the Intensive Care Unit: An Under-Recognized Syndrome of Organ DysfunctionSeminars in Respiratory and Critical Care Medicine, 2001