The OCEANIC study

Each year 20,000 children become very ill or injured and need specialist care within a Paediatric Intensive Care Unit (PICU). Most children survive. However, these children and their families (parents and siblings) may experience problems after they have left the PICU. These can include physical (breathing, eating and drinking), functional (moving and concentration), and/or emotional problems (stress and fears) to themselves and their families (parents and siblings). These have the potential to affect health, place burdens on parents/carers, impact on education and social development.

However, we currently do not know which children and families experience problems, when the problems occur, and what causes them. Without this information, we are unsure how to help and support children and their families after PICU.

Project Overview

We want to understand the physical, functional, emotional and social consequences of being on PICU to children (aged 1 month-17 years), their parents and siblings, in the first-year after a PICU admission. We will conduct a study that will collect information from children, their parents and siblings, who have been admitted to PICU over a year to see if there are any changes over time. In addition, some families will take part in interviews in order to explore their care and support needs.

At the end of this project we hope to have a better understanding of the health consequences of children, their parents and siblings in the first year following PICU and their experiences of care and support needs. This will provide information about anything that can be changed to improve negative consequences of being on a PICU. We will share our results with children and their families, national organisations, healthcare commissioners, policy makers and the international paediatric intensive care community to ensure that our results can be used to improve care for children and their families, leading to better health and well-being.

https://sites.google.com/nihr.ac.uk/oceanic