• Cécile Flahault, Mathilde Trosdorf, Marie Sonrier, Christel Vioulac, Léonor Fasse, Jean-François Timsit, Sébastien Bailly, and Maité Garrouste-Orgeas.
• LPPS-EA4057, Laboratory of Psychopathology and Health Process, Paris Descartes University, Paris, France.
• Crit Care Explor. 2021 May 1; 3 (5): e0384.

ObjectivesTo investigate patients' experience of ICU diaries 6 months after ICU discharge among survivors. This study was designed to add insight into a large randomized study, which found no benefit of the ICU diary to post-traumatic stress disorder among critically ill patients having received mechanical ventilation.DesignA preplanned qualitative substudy of patients receiving an ICU diary written by ICU caregivers and families. Six months after ICU discharge, survivors were contacted by a psychologist for a telephone interview using a semi-directive guide.SettingThirty-five French ICUs.PatientsAll ICU survivors having received an ICU diary.InterventionAn ICU diary written by both ICU staff and families.Measurements And Main ResultsAmong the 332 patients randomized in the intervention group (having had an ICU diary filled by both ICU staff and families), 191 (57.7%) were alive at 6 months and 101 of 191 (52.9%) participated in a telephone interview. They were (median [interquartile range]) 64 years old (53-70 yr old); 65 (64.4%) were men, and 79 (78.2%) were medical patients. Duration of ICU stay was 13 days (8-21 d). Three themes were derived from the thematic analysis: 1) reading the diary: between emotion and pain, 2) how the diary helped, and 3) the bittersweet representation of the diary. For half of the patients, the diary is a good memory of difficult times (55/101, 54.5%), others seem to be more ambivalent about it (28/101, 27.8%), and 37 of 101, 36.6% see it as a painful representation of a time to be forgotten.ConclusionsWhen reading their ICU diaries, ICU survivors experienced mixed emotions, related to family messages, medical caregiving, and to the severity of their illness. Patients described diaries as a help or a hindrance to recovery, depending on their wish to remember the period or move on from it.Copyright © 2021 The Authors. Published by Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc. on behalf of the Society of Critical Care Medicine.

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