COVID-19 Challenged Everybody’s Mental Health: A COVID-19 Intensive Care Unit Experience Improved Patients, Families, and Medical Staff’s Mental Well-being

Abstract

This article describes the intensive care unit’s experience of a teaching hospital in Southern Brazil during the COVID-19 pandemic. Medical staff’s exhaustion and the impossibility of communication between patients and families motivated a creative larger intervention in the system. Physicians from other units of the hospital volunteered to become a communicating force, a bridge between the intensivists and the patients’ families to keep them informed about the patient’s medical status, and to assist in their evolving needs. The project developed in such a way that weekly online debriefing sessions involving the multidisciplinary teams became a source of enhanced mental health for everyone. A decrease in loneliness and an increase in meaningfulness, solidarity, humor, and continuous transdisciplinary learning were some of the positive results of this experience. They are evidence that even under the worst circumstances, human connectedness with the best intentions can help us thrive.