Patients discharged from hospital after recovering from critical illness are being invited back so nurses can offer them help following their trauma.

Nurses at The Horton Hospital, Banbury, are asking people who have been on ventilators during their hospital stay to return after a month, five months and a year, to talk about their progress.

Staff nurses Nikki Cartwright and Andrea Worlock believe the follow-up clinics will help improve intensive care services, and community support once patients are discharged.

The people they are inviting back have recovered after being severely ill or in a coma during their hospital stay, typically because of a road accident, or because they collapsed with pneumonia or breathing problems.

Most of them were sedated or unconscious while on an artificial ventilation machine, which took over their breathing while they were ill. The experience can leave some people suffering from nightmares or flashbacks.

Ms Worlock said: "They have spent weeks under the care of nurses and doctors and then they are out on a limb. They feel very vulnerable.

"Quite often what they need is somebody to talk through what has happened, but they may also need referral to other services.

"The other side of it is we will be bringing back ways to improve what we do here -- for example whether certain types of sedation cause more problems than others.

"It is also nice to have feedback for staff on how well people are doing after they have left us. It can be a reward in itself to see how much better they are." As part of the follow-up care, patients are being given questionnaires covering the physical and psychological effects of their hospital experiences.

The scheme is being supported by GPs in the area and consultant anaesthetists, who work closely with intensive care patients.

Although the nurses have only seen two patients so far, they want to build up case histories in the next few months.

They will review the results, and information they get will be fed back to the intensive care unit and community health care services.

Ms Cartwright said: "We believe the information we bring back can improve patient care." The follow-up clinics at The Horton are the first to be set up within the Oxford Radcliffe Hospitals NHS Trust -- also responsible for Oxford's John Radcliffe, Churchill and Radcliffe Infirmary -- but a similar scheme is due to be launched in the city in the near future.