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

So at the moment we’re talking to a client, who’s had their 82-year old mother in ICU for 16 weeks. Their mother has a tracheostomy and is fully ventilator-dependent and the family is asking whether intensive care at home is an option for them.

And yes, intensive care at home is an option but, intensive care at home as great as it is, should be a last resort. So I’m telling you the missing link here, because you should avoid intensive care home by taking the right steps in the first place.

So whenever you have a loved one in intensive care, that’s having a trach number one, you should be checking whether the trach is really necessary. Whether someone can come off the ventilator and the breathing tube beyond the shadow of a doubt. That is the first question you need to ask.

And number two, when if a trach is necessary and unavoidable? The next question is how do you wean somebody off the ventilator and the trach, and again, it keeps coming back to the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that you don’t know what you don’t know.

You don’t know what questions to ask. You don’t know what to look for, and you don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care to get the outcomes that you as a family deserve, wants and needs.

So what needs to happen is, you need to educate yourself about intensive care from day one. You can’t leave things up to chance. You just can’t. There are dozens of things happening in intensive care simultaneously and unless you have an in-depth understanding about those details, you’re fighting a losing battle.

So how can you find out about those little things? How can you direct potentially care to get your loved one off the ventilator, whether it’s with a breathing tube or with a tracheostomy? Well, again, you need to get professional advice. I have worked in intensive care for over 20 years, and I can simply guide you. I can advocate for you and for your loved one, and basically give you a second opinion, and hold the intensive care team accountable. It’s simply not good enough.

I hear often families call us and they say, “Oh yeah, my loved one is on 40% on the ventilator.” There are 30 other things happening simultaneously that you need to be aware of, that you need to understand to get the outcomes that you want.

And unless you’re starting with this process early, from day one, when you have a loved one in intensive care, you will be fighting an uphill battle. You won’t understand what’s really happening. And the intensive care team, unless you’re asking all the right questions will tell you only half of the story, they’re withholding information, and only with educating yourself and with getting professional advocacy, like at intensive care hotline.com will you be able to make informed decisions, have control, get peace of mind and you get results, without that, you’re fighting a losing battle.

So coming back to the client that I was talking to, after 16 weeks in ICU, basically what they were saying there were times when their mother was off the ventilator for 16 hours a day, went back on the ventilator overnight, and then they changed some of the medication. And then she ended up back on the ventilator again, 24 hours a day. And unless you understand the implications of medications, unless you understand side effects, unless you understand the fine details that go into weaning somebody off a ventilator, you will be fighting a losing battle.

And now their mother is at a stage where she could benefit from intensive care at home. No doubt about that, but that could have potentially been avoided by holding intensive care teams accountable, by working with a weaning plan that we can help you with.

So this is my tip for today. You can’t start early enough in the advocacy process. You need to start from day one.

And if you have a loved one in intensive care, go and check out intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or send me an email to [email protected].

Like this video, comment down below what questions that you have and subscribe to my YouTube channel for new updates for families in intensive care.

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