Although modern medicine is increasingly objective and precise, accurate assessment of patients' symptoms in the intensive care unit (ICU) often remains elusive.Yet, assessment is required for relief of symptoms, which in turn is essential for the patient's general well-being and associated with important ICU outcomes [1].Many critically ill patients can provide self-reports, which are the gold standard of symptom assessment, and, as lightening of sedation becomes the norm, it is likely that more patients in the ICU will be able to respond when asked to report their symptoms.In this article, we focus on five of the most stressful symptoms reported by ICU patients [2, 3], which warrant the daily attention of the interprofessional ICU team (Table 1).