The effects of a sensory stimulation intervention on psychosocial and clinical outcomes of critically ill patients and their families: A randomised controlled trial

To explore the effectiveness of a sensory stimulation intervention on intensive care unit patients' psychosocial, clinical, and family outcomes. A prospective, assessor-blind, parallel-group randomised controlled trial. A surgical intensive care unit of one tertiary hospital in Guangzhou, mainland China. Participants in the intervention group received a daily 30-minute auditory and visual stimulation session starting from recruitment and for a maximum of seven days while in the intensive care unit. One hundred fifty-two patients and family caregiver dyads were recruited. Patients in the intervention group showed lower total scores of post-traumatic stress disorder (21.92 ± 6.34 vs 27.62 ± 10.35, p = 0.001), depressive symptoms (3.76 ± 3.99 vs 6.78 ± 4.75, p = 0.001) and delusional memories (0.47 ± 0.92 vs 0.82 ± 1.23, p = 0.001) collected immediately post-intervention than those in the control group, while not on depressive symptoms at one-month post-intervention (3.32 ± 4.03 vs 3.28 ± 3.77, p = 0.800). Sensory stimulation did not significantly impact patients' unit length of stay and 30-day mortality (all p > 0.05). For family outcomes, family caregivers in the intervention group had greater satisfaction with care (127.12 ± 14.14 vs 114.38 ± 21.97, p = 0.001) and a lower level of anxiety (28.49 ± 6.48 vs 34.64 ± 7.68, p = 0.001) than family caregivers in the control group. Sensory stimulation may benefit patients' and family caregivers' psychological well-being, and further well-designed multi-centre clustered randomized controlled trials could be considered to strengthen the evidence.