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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.

So today’s tip is about, again, when we have people opt-in for their free instant impact report, which you can get on our website by the way, at intensivecarehotline.com, we ask them what’s their biggest frustration?

And one of the frustrations that we had this week was, “The choice ICU is presenting to us is either that my father is going to die or that he’ll end up in a nursing home and will be dependent on care forever. He has too much life left, and he certainly doesn’t want to end up in a nursing home. So, what do you do in a situation like that?”

The first thing is, that the biggest challenge for families in intensive care, is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know what questions to ask, they don’t know their rights, and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And looks, to me, that’s exactly what you are dealing with here. That ICU is sort of painting this black and white picture to you and saying, well, he’s either ending up in a nursing home or is going to die. And any other things could happen in between.

The first thing is you need to get factual here. And what do I mean by that, by factual is, you need to find out what is exactly happening. Why are they saying what they’re saying? Are they saying it because they need an ICU bed because they’re so busy or they don’t have staff that they need to empty the ICU bed?

Or are they saying it because there are real facts for it? And for someone that doesn’t understand medicine or intensive care in particular, would be very hard to make an objective and factual informed decision here. And that’s exactly what we can help you with here at intensivecarehotline.com. We can ask the questions for you with the doctors, or we can set you up with some questions or we can look at the medical records.

And we look at medical records for patients in intensive care in real time for a number of clients because that’s what we do. We give you that second opinion in real time and we can interpret clinical data for you. And also, they’re painting a really black and white picture here saying that your dad is going to die or is going to end up in a nursing home. It could also be things happening in between, or he might be going home and might be perfectly normal after a while. He might be going home and his health might be impaired. He might need a tracheostomy except you haven’t mentioned anything, whether he’s ventilated or anything. You didn’t mention anything there. So, there could be a number of things happening there that you simply don’t know at the moment because you’re not having enough information and you can’t be guided by just black and white statements without any objective data.

So my recommendation here is contact us here at intensivecarehotline.com and we can guide you with the next steps, whether it’s by us talking to the doctors and nurses, whether it’s by us setting you up with the right questions or it’s reviewing your dad’s medical records. It’s ideally a combination of all of that to really get to the bottom of things and guide you step by step. I have worked in intensive care for over 20 years in three different countries, and I’ve also worked as a nurse unit manager in intensive care for over 5 years. And I’ve been consulting families in intensive care for the last 10 years all around the world. I’m talking to ICUs every day of the week.

So that is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, check out our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There you have access to me and my team 24-hours a day in a membership area and via email. And we answer all questions intensive care related 24-hours a day.

Now also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care, and we highly recommend that we look at the medical records for your loved one so you can really understand what’s happening. Most ICU teams are not even telling you half of what’s going on. They’re either too busy or they think you don’t understand, which is not true. You will understand once you have someone taking the time to walk you through it. We review medical records in real time in intensive care. We also review them after intensive care in case you suspect medical negligence, in case you need closure or you have some unanswered questions, but we highly recommend to do it in real time.

Now, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care. Share the video with your friends and families. Click the like button, click the notification bell, and comment below what you want to see next, or what questions and insights you have from this video.

So thanks for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Take care.