“The ICU is a good place to not die, but a bad place to recover.”
Staff rotate constantly and handoff notes are thin, so a known drug reaction can get lost. Patients can’t sleep and develop delusions, and nobody can say why. The attending overrules the specialists. His relative started recovering once she left the ICU for a step-down unit. The system optimizes for keeping you alive through the night, and recovery is somebody else’s job.