An outside perspective on the lifeworld of ICU

Abstract

This paper has been reconstructed from the field notes of the principal author on this paper. Selected sections may enable those for whom intensive care encompasses a taken-as-given world, to share with an outsider some thoughts on its everyday workings, common assumptions, and remarkable characteristics. The orientation of the paper is ethnographic as well as ‘phenomenological’; that is, the descriptions are informed as much by the ethnographer's private sentiments as by what is objectively ‘there’. This creates a quite ‘personal’ narrative. The description centralises ethnography as much as that which is commented on. The sentiments expressed may be of interest, we believe, because they are likely to reflect those experienced by patients and their families upon entering the intensive care unit for the first time.