Prema Menon, M.D., Assistant Professor in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine (Photo: COM Design & Photography)

Patients in the intensive care unit who rely on mechanical ventilation for life support are often awake, but unable to verbalize their needs, posing a challenge for the physicians and nurses who care for them. And although health status might be the obvious choice for what’s on their minds, preliminary data has shown that that’s not always the case.

“Questions like ‘Who’s feeding my dog?’ and ‘Who’s sending the mortgage check?’ come up quite a bit,” says Prema Menon, M.D., an assistant professor in the Division of Pulmonary Disease and Critical Care Medicine. A $50,000 grant from the University of Vermont Medical Group is helping Menon and colleagues identify gaps in how patients, families, and physicians perceive the experience of mechanical ventilation, which will be followed by the development of a communication tool that meets the needs of all these groups, but especially patients.

The current standard – laminated flip cards with various pictures and faces that patients can point to – is woefully inadequate, Menon says, as it isn’t always clear what the symbols mean, and it doesn’t take into account feedback from actual patients and their families. That’s set to change, thanks to a partnership with a team of senior UVM engineering students who are working with Menon for their capstone project. They’re developing an “easy click” device that incorporates lessons learned from Menon’s research, with a prototype to be unveiled in the spring of 2016. Menon believes this device will give ventilated patients a “voice” and allow them to participate in decision-making surrounding their care.