Brigham & Women's Hospital, Post ICU Clinic
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Have you or your loved one survived a critical illness and wondered why things aren’t quite right?
We might be able to help. The ICU Recovery Program is a
partnership of patients, families, researchers, and
healthcare providers. Our mission is to improve the
quality of life of those still recovering from the effects
of a critical illness.
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Brigham & Women's ICU Recovery Clinic
All patients who were in an ICU on a ventilator, or had
sepsis or delirium could benefit from an appointment at
our ICU survivor’s clinic. Many patients have lingering
issues such as memory loss, depression, anxiety, insomnia,
physical limitations, and difficulty returning “back to normal”.
To make an appointment: call 617-732-6770 and ask for a
Thursday morning appointment with
Drs. Gerald Weinhouse and Daniela Lamas.
What ICU Recovery Clinic can do?
• Psychiatric screening and referral
• Neuro-cognitive screening and referral
• Medication review
• Social services involvement
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Peer Support
Connect and learn from others with shared experience. We are one of 6 centers nationwide with informational support groups sponsored by the Society of Critical Care Medicine.
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Dr. Weinhouse, Dr. Lamas, and Their Team are Premier Experts in the Field of PICS Treatment
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Countless articles, research studies, and books about Post Intensive Care Syndrome have been written by the Team at Brigham & Women's Hospital. Their website, aftertheicu.org, is one of the most visited websites about PICS in the world! From personal experience, one of the founders of PostICU, Inc., Rob Rainer, happily attests to the fact that but for the intervention of Dr. Weinhouse and Lamas in 2015, he probably not would be alive today.
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For attentive, responsible, thorough medical care, call After the ICU Team at Brigham & Women's Hospital. Call 617-732-6770
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You Can Stop Humming Now
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Click on any of these links to purchase this highly rated book
Amazon.com Barnes & Nobel Indiebound
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Matt McCarthy,
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Special to USA TODAY
Published, 11:06 a.m. ET March 29, 2018:
Doctors are a tough crowd. When one of our own writes a book, we’re inherently skeptical and, if I’m being honest, a touch envious. What can this physician have to say, we wonder, that I don’t already know?
As Daniela Lamas reveals in her dazzling new book, You Can Stop Humming Now (Little, Brown, 256 pp., ★★★½ out of four), the answer becomes clear after just a few pages: quite a bit.
Dr. Lamas begins her book by letting us in on a secret: during residency training, she was known as the one who wouldn’t let patients die. Regardless of the prognosis, she would not accept death as a potential outcome for those under her care. I can vouch for this.
Lamas and I were part of the same intern class at Columbia-Presbyterian Medical Center a decade ago, and she quickly established herself as a uniquely gifted and devoted physician with a talent for writing. Back then, she wrote pieces that challenged the status quo, pushing the boundaries of what doctors-in-training could (and should) write about. Her work irked hospital administrators, but it delighted the rest of us.
Lamas is now an attending physician in Boston, caring for critically ill patients in the intensive care unit of the hospital where she was born. She has a decade of medical practice under her belt, and in her new book, she effortlessly captures the rhythm and mayhem of modern medicine.
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Author and physician Daniela Lamas.
This slender volume is not a typical medical memoir, however; we’re not here to learn about the author's development as a physician. The focus is on others, those who have survived the intensive care unit and are struggling to cope with the challenges of life with chronic critical illness.
Intrigued by their stories, Lamas starts a clinic to help them navigate their new lives. It’s a provocative idea, but she initially has difficulty attracting patients. “These were people with terrifying memories of what had happened to them in the hospital, people who might not be willing to return...” Some were understandably scared of hospitals while others had new memory deficits and simply couldn’t remember to come back.
Eventually, the patients trickle in, and together they work through the challenges of adjusting to daily life. One patient is afraid to be alone with his young son, worried that he could die and leave his child without a father; another is too anxious to cook, fearing she will forget to turn the oven off.
Lamas helps bridge “the chasm that separated what happened in the intensive care unit from what came afterward.” She explains to patients that they’re confronting a new entity in medicine: post-intensive care syndrome. “We gave our patients a name and a diagnosis,” she writes, “and with that, I think, a degree of reassurance and perhaps even hope.” Warmth and humanity radiate from every page.
Lamas and her team are doing something innovative, providing a lifeline to patients we tend not to think about: those who should feel fortunate just to be alive. But these men and women have very real problems and conditions that go under-reported and untreated. The patients in this book have something important to say, and so does the author. We should all be listening.
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Two Radio Segments Featuring After the ICU Team
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Host Arun Rath found out more about the physical, mental. and emotional recovery for coronavirus patients after leaving the ICU. Then, he checked-in on how Boston is preparing to recover from this pandemic. Finally, we heard how a Cape Cod children's clothing manufacturer is making cloth masks for their customers and frontline workers.
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Click Here to Listen to the Radio Show
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Daniela Lamas, critical care physician, and
Stacey Salamon, social worker
(from Brigham & Women's After the ICU Team — 2:20
Boston Mayor Marty Walsh — 21:48
Brian Gonye — 45:40
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Jack Lepiarz
Reporter and Anchor
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Click Here to Listen to
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For COVID-19 Patients Who Survive The ICU, A New Struggle Awaits
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For those COVID-19 patients who go on a ventilator and survive, the struggle doesn’t necessarily end once they’ve been discharged from the hospital. Research suggests that those days or weeks under sedation have an impact on the mind and body that can be life-changing. Stacey Salomon, a social worker in the intensive care unit and critical illness recovery program at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston, joined WBUR to discuss the problems patients can face once they leave critical care and what can be done about it.
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This segment aired on April 29, 2020.