Dear Reader:

Tales from the Intensive Care Unit

Suffering and pain are integral parts of the human experience, including what patients in intensive care go through daily. In this book, we read about the real experiences of individuals mentioned by name, so that we realize that healing is achieved through the combination of scientific progress and human relationships.
In this book, we read how doctors, nurses, and other support professionals worked to study the best methods for patients' recovery, removing them from life support, recovering from the delirium that afflicts some intensive care patients, and rehabilitating them. These efforts crystallized into an integrated global program called the ABCDEF package, which aims to accelerate recovery and involve the patient's family in the treatment plan.
As a physician working in the Middle East, it gives me great pleasure to see medicine in our region rise to the highest international standards, and our advanced hospitals are the greatest evidence of this. It provides the best services for the most severe cases, and I see the translation of this book as a wonderful step towards delivering a message of hope and healing to our readers.
I encourage you to read this book and share it with your friends and medical team so they can experience the human spirit in their interactions. You can also visit Dr. Elie's website (www.icudelirium.org) to find photos of the patients who shared their stories in this book. Perhaps this will inspire us to improve medical services everywhere.

Dr. Yassin Arabi
Head of the Intensive Care Unit
Medical Director of Respiratory Services, King Abdulaziz Medical City
Professor at the College of Medicine, King Saud bin Abdulaziz University for Health Sciences