Patient's experiences of mechanical ventilation

BACKGROUND: Endotracheal or tracheostomy tube in mechanically ventilated patients disturb verbal communication with others. Therefore, patients are frustrated of requesting for their needs or problems related to artificial breathing. Therefore investigating self-experiences of these patients can be applied in providing them with a better care by clinical personnel. METHODS: This is a qualitative phenomenological survey. The study population was patients who were mechanically ventilated at least for one time and were more than 12 years old. Data were collected during five months by deep interview and then were analyzed by Collizi's seven–stage method. RESULTS: The findings of this research were classified in 139 codes and 3 categories as: 1) Interpersonal experiences, 2) Extra personal experiences and 3) Intrapersonal experiences. CONCLUSION: Mechanically ventilated patients tolerate many stressors, which many of them are externally sustained. Better care will reduce these stressors, and make it easier for the patients to get along with the artificial breathing. Meanwhile some pleasure experiences had been mentioned by patients in this study.