Qualitative study explores nutritional recovery in ICU survivors, highlighting barriers and support needs.
Key Points
The aim is to understand how ICU survivors navigate their nutritional recovery after hospital discharge and the factors influencing these experiences.
Qualitative study using in-depth interviews to gather participants' lived experiences.
Participants were recruited through convenience sampling; narrative and thematic analysis were performed.
The Transtheoretical Model served as a sensitizing concept during analysis.
Identified four themes: 1) Eating in the shadow of critical illness, 2) Nutritional care that worked, 3) Unmet nutritional needs, and 4) What we wish we'd had.
Two broad processes of nutritional recovery emerged: enabling and constraining, influenced by psychological readiness and relational support.
Findings suggest that nutritional recovery is multidimensional, impacted by systemic support and personal experiences.