Early Rehabilitation in Critically Ill Children
Research type
Research Study
Full title
Feasibility of implementing a multi-disciplinary rehabilitation programme to support long term recovery of critically ill children and their families.
IRAS ID
233967
Contact name
Nazima Pathan
Contact email
Sponsor organisation
Cambridge University Hospitals NHS Foundation Trust & The University of Cambridge
Duration of Study in the UK
1 years, 11 months, 0 days
Research summary
Each year nearly 20,000 children become very ill or injured and need intensive care from specialist medical, nursing and other health professionals. Most children survive, but their illness or injury may result in physical weakness, functional problems (affecting ability to do their normal daily activities) or emotional problems (stress and anxiety), and may also affect their families. We believe that critically ill children need supportive treatments and therapies to recover, called ‘rehabilitation’.
In adult intensive care, robust guidelines from the National Institute of Clinical Excellence provide a framework for hospitals to assess psychological wellbeing, physical recovery and the impact of critical illness on work and family life. These interventions have proven feasible, beneficial and cost-effective. There are no guidelines for supporting rehabilitation in critically ill children in the UK. In some international centres, early physical therapy has proven beneficial in increasing mobility.
Our team (which includes medical, nursing, allied health and patient representatives) has worked together to develop an innovative family-centred rehabilitation care plan (appendix). We would like to assess the feasibility and effectiveness of implementing this care plan in order to improve longer-term quality of life for our patients and their families.
We will assess whether the rehabilitation package (which consists of integrated rehabilitation by physiotherapists, psychologists, dietitians and speech and language therapists) can improve physical and psychological recovery of children and their families after a period of intensive care. We will supplement this with written information on admission and then at PICU and hospital discharge on what to expect during and after critical illness.
We believe this will reduces weakness and stress in children and post-traumatic stress and depression in parent/carers. We will monitor these outcomes using validated questionnaires of physical and psychological status in children and their parents/carers.REC name
East Midlands - Derby Research Ethics Committee
REC reference
18/EM/0009
Date of REC Opinion
5 Jan 2018
REC opinion
Favourable Opinion