Hola a Tod@s!


Today is the first time that I write as an editor, and I am happy! Since the end of the world, directly from a narrow and narrow strip of land called Chile, I would like to share with everybody my post titled: “Family things”.


The phone rang during the evening, on the other side of the line my cousin crying… “My dad has got into  the ICU, the pneumonia was complicated and the Bipap is not enough”… I understood that call as a company, after all that “knew and knew” appeal of those things I was.


Finally we were in the waiting room of the Hospital, I don’t know how these rooms that you know are.
I have seen mostly a place with chairs that are far from being comfortable and lack of privacy. While there we should expect the solemn appeal by the guard that regulated the visit. Exceptionally he let us pass two of us, because part of the Protocol of the visit is that it is only allowed individual visits.




Suddenly we were face to face with reality… He was in a bed, with a tube in the mouth, filled with infussion pumps, a monitor that sounded and a mechanical ventilator that was bigger than us. For me, it looked like a battle that, for the first time, I visited from the “another perspective”. 


That experience made to open eyes was the importance of standardizing the “Welcome to ICU”, although I think that ‘welcome’ there’s nothing, for that reason and by way of self-analysis I invite you to check out the following article “Comfort of the patient’s family in an Intensive Care Unit related to welcoming”, published in the Revista da Escola de Enfermagem da USP, São Paulo, in October 2013.


It’s an interesting study in Brazil (in order to get in tune with FIFA Worl Cup fever) which interviewed relatives said to be in a “more or less comfortable” level and left clear that equipment should improve his interest in the needs of the family and make more flexible visiting times.


We all know that the income of a family member to a critical unit is full of stress and disruption of family dynamics, accompanied by feelings of insecurity and fear.In the hands of the multidisciplinary team is able to make this situation something more human.


Until next week… When I celebrate the triumph of the Chilean team against the Spanish one!!


Veronica Rojas.