Benchmarking a nurse-led ICU counselling initiative.

BACKGROUND Specialist counselling services for critical care are in their infancy. Both patients and their families report problems during recovery that would benefit from counselling. The ICU counselling service was established in 2005 using two nurse counsellors. AIM To benchmark the new ICU counselling service against other established services and to explore differences in the case-mix. METHOD The benchmarking exercise was a prospective audit. It examined the change in symptom severity and clients' perception of the effect of counselling. RESULTS Forty-six clients were recruited, 26 from Whiston ICU and 20 from the community-based service. Thirty-nine completed follow-up questionnaires. The ICU service had a higher percentage of clients with severe symptoms but most