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What is the Inspire Programme?
A stay in critical care can be a stressful experience, and may have long term effects on your health and wellbeing. This applies to both patients, and their close family. It can take a long time for you to recover after having a critical illness. Recovery can be easier if you get the right support.
The Inspire programme aims to find out about any problems you have been having as a result of your stay in critical care. We want to make sure you get the right support to help with these problems.
You can take a member of your family or a carer along to the Inspire programme. Â They might also be having some difficulties, like changes in their mood, sleep, work and finances while giving support.
You will receive support from:
- Doctors
- Nurses
- Occupational therapists
- Physiotherapists
- Pharmacists
- Psychologists
We will give you the tools to move forward with your life. We will give you the stepping stones so that you can achieve your goals.
How to take part in Inspire
You will be referred to the Inspire programme by one of the critical care team that looked after you while you were in hospital.
You will receive a letter a few months after you are discharged from the hospital to invite you to come along to the programme.
We will ask you to complete some questionnaires to measure how you are managing. These questionnaires will be repeated at the end of the Inspire programme to understand how you have progressed.
Programme outline
The Inspire programme runs for 5 weeks, and includes 3 individual appointments and 5 group support sessions.
Your individual appointments will be with:
- A doctor and nurse, to explain what happened during your critical care stay and answer your questions. They will write down what you have discussed with them, and you will be given this to keep.
- A pharmacist to review the medicines that you are on. They will tell you if these are still appropriate and will see if you need to be given anything else.
- A physiotherapist or an occupational therapist. They will lokk at any physical difficulties you might be having and how these are affecting your everyday activities. They will help you to set goals for things that you want to be able to do. They will make a plan with you about how you will achieve your goals.
Groups
We encourage the people in the group sessions to support each other. Patients and carers often find that other people may have had similar problems to themselves.
Some find it helpful to share their stories in a relaxed sociable environment, although there is never any pressure to do this. It is up to you if you want to do this and we will help to guide you. Everything that you say in the group is confidential.
After Inspire
We will get in touch with you 3 – 6 months after the programme has finished and ask you to repeat the questionnaires to see how you are progressing.
Rehabilitation Assessment (separate link)
After a stay in critical care you may have:
- A drop in your fitness
- Aches and pains in your muscles and joints
- Problems with balance and falls
- A loss in strength
- Difficulty with day to day activity
- Money worries and problems with return to work
- Poor memory and concentration
- Fatigue (extreme tiredness)
During your rehab assessment these issues will be discussed, and your therapist will support you to make a plan to achieve your rehab goals.
Depending on your difficulties your rehab plan might include:
- Exercises that improve strength, balance, and fitness
- Information on managing return to work and daily roles
- Use of activity diaries and pacing to manage your fatigue (tiredness)
- Breathing pattern practice
- Ways to improve your memory and concentration
Psychology (in a separate link)
After a stay in critical care you may find that you have problems with:
- Low mood
- Feeling anxious
- Being easily upset
- Difficulties with sleeping
- Nightmares
- Flashbacks to your stay in hospital
You may be worried about when you might get back to ‘normal’, and back to your day to day activities and tasks. Not knowing when (and if) this might happen can cause a lot of worry. Work and money may be causing you stress if you have not been able to return to work. In addition, previous traumatic experiences may be playing on your mind.
What can help me here?
- A rehab plan and goals
- Time for relaxation built into your day
- Acceptance that this is a difficult time and you will experience ups and downs
- Adjusting your expectations
- Noticing the improvements you have made, as this can help improve your mood
- Assessment of mental health difficulties you may be having
- Letting people close to you know you are finding things difficult
- Asking for help if you need it
- Cutting down the stress in your life
- Not thinking about your symptoms as much, as this may be making you feel anxious
- Realising that you can recover, but this may take some time.
- Doing the things which are important to you, and saying no to the less important stuff
Pharmacy (in a separate link)
The medicines which you usually take for your long term health conditions (like heart and respiratory diseases) may have been stopped when you were taken to hospital because you were so unwell. A review of your medicines after you are better is important to make sure you are taking all the medicines you need.
The pharmacist will look at the medicines you are taking, to make sure that you have all the medicines you need, the dose of each medicine is correct for you, and find out if you are having any medicine related problems.
The pharmacist will make sure you understand the reasons for taking the medicines you are prescribed.
Critical Care stay summary (in separate link)
A doctor and a nurse will explain what happened when you were a patient in intensive care. They will give details about
- why you needed to be cared for in the intensive care ward
- any procedures or operations you had
- the medicines you needed to help you
- any complications you had.
You may not remember much about your intensive care stay because you may have been given some medicine to make you sleepy, to help your body rest and recover. Some people have a few memories about their time in intensive care, and these can be strange and sometimes a bit frightening.
You will have the chance to ask the doctor and nurse any questions you have about this time, and explain anything you don’t understand or remember.
If you wish, you will be given a copy of your summary to take away with you after your appointment.
Useful Resources (separate link)
- Lanarkshire Mind Matters – NHS Lanarkshire Adult Psychology Services (scot.nhs.uk)
- Home – Remploy
- Pain Association
- Lanarkshire Carers
- Physiotherapy for breathing pattern disorders resources for physiotherapists (physiotherapyforbpd.org.uk)
- Home – Cruse Bereavement Support
- Home – ICUsteps
- ICS – Patients and Relatives
- ICS – A Guide to ICU
- Elament – Well Connected Programme
- Well connected Lanarkshire is also available to download as an app
- Living Life to the Full | helping you help yourself (llttf.com)
- Paths for all
- Aliss
- LAMH
- SAMH
- Breathing Space
- NHS Lanarkshire – Your health and wellbeing
Inspire programme leaflet (in separate link).
This is on the patient information leaflet section of first port.
