Family and friends have a crucial role in intensive care: both in supporting the patient, whether conscious or unconscious, and in helping healthcare professionals tailor care as closely as possible to the patient’s needs and wishes.

This section includes a page explaining visits. Before visiting someone in intensive care, it is important to understand the hygiene precautions that protect a patient who is vulnerable because of illness. The page also explores who should visit. Support from loved ones is invaluable, but every patient is different. Consider what the patient would have been comfortable revealing about their vulnerability, and to whom.

Another page explains the main principles governing medical information, including when and how to obtain clear updates. It also offers practical tips for making the most of conversations with the medical team.

Supporting someone in intensive care is not something people instinctively know how to do. The unfamiliar environment, emotional strain and the patient’s fluctuating level of awareness can all leave you unsure how to help. The page Supporting a patient in intensive care, developed with input from many people who have experienced an ICU stay, suggests both small and significant ways to provide valuable support.

Having someone close to you in intensive care is likely to cause considerable stress. The page Managing your stress offers suggestions to help reduce and cope with it.

If the patient has children close to them, you may need to decide how to talk to them about intensive care and whether they should visit. The page When someone close to a child is in intensive care offers points to consider when deciding what is best for the child, the patient and the family.

The healthcare team may turn to family and friends to help them understand what decisions would best reflect the patient’s wishes. The dedicated page Designated trusted person and primary family contact explains the difference between these two roles in the French healthcare system.

In the most serious situations, the team may decide not to start or continue treatments that can no longer offer a realistic prospect of improvement and would only cause discomfort or pain. To understand how decisions to withhold or withdraw treatment are made, and the role of those close to the patient, see Decisions to withhold or withdraw treatment.