Project lead ISMG: Prof. Dr. Christian Apfelbacher PhD, Prof. Dr. Harald Gündel

Project member(s): Heike Heytens, Wencke Schindler

Funding: other, 01.01.2023 - 31.12.2025

The intensive care unit (ICU) is a challenging environment for healthcare professionals, patients, and their families. Up to 75% of ICU nurses experience psychosomatic symptoms, and around 30% of them consider leaving their job . At the same time, there is a shortage of healthcare professionals in Germany, especially in intensive medicine. Against this backgroud, the aim of this project is to develop a concept for integrated psychosocial care in the ICU and to test its feasibility in a pilot study. The project is funded for three years with a total of approximately 1.4 million euros, and it is based on theories of resource preservation and psychosocial safety climate (PSC). PSC will help us to determine intervention effects while evaluating for feasability.  The starting point will be the analysis of needs and wants of healthcare professionals, patients, and their families through a scoping review. Conducting focus groups, stakeholders will participate in the development of an integrated psychosocial intervention. As an essential component of the intervention, a psychologist will be integrated into an ICU team to provide support to the staff and improve the psychosocial care of critically ill patients and their families. A pilot study on eight ICUs will then evaluate the feasibility of the concept. Alongside qualitive data through interviews and field notes, outcome measures will be defined, such as well-being, stress, anxiety, depression and sick leave. If successful, this project will provide an innovative concept for integrated psychosocial care in intensive medicine that can be broadly implemented.