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

So today, I want to talk about a client that we’re currently working with. Here’s the situation, they have their husband in intensive care after cardiac arrest with a hypoxic/anoxic brain injury and they’ve been in ICU for about 7 days and ICU was talking about end of life from Day 1 saying, “We should just stop everything because if your husband survives, he won’t have any ‘quality of life.’” 

The family, thankfully, objected to that because one or two days in ICU is not a long time to make a judgment about future perceived quality of life. No one knows what the future brings. If you do stop life support and you kill someone, you do know what the future brings —the death of your loved one.

So, after a few days in ICU, they finally found some of my videos and some of our blogs at intensivecarehotline.com where we extensively and abundantly answer questions for families in intensive care. They realize, “Oh, there might be another way of dealing with this.” And then, the wife reached out and we looked at the situation more closely. Once the intensive care team realized that the family wouldn’t give in to an end-of-life situation, and then work, try, and fast track our client’s husband towards a tracheostomy and the PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tube sending them out to LTAC (Long Term Acute Care) as quickly as possible. This is obviously a client in the U.S. Again, that’s where we stepped in saying, “Hold off. Let’s get some more information. Let’s look at medical records. Let’s look at ventilator settings. Let’s look at medications that are going in and so forth,” which is what we did. 

So, then we found he’s still heavily sedated, and they haven’t even tried to wake him up, making him absolutely ventilator dependent. After 7 days in ICU, it is way too early to do a tracheostomy. Research and best evidence-based practice suggests a tracheostomy should be done after Day 10 to 14 when patients are clearly showing signs of the inability to wean off the ventilator or if they don’t have a cough or a gag reflex, or if they can’t swallow. That’s when you need to move towards the tracheostomy, but not after Day 7. 

So, we advise the family not to give consent to a tracheostomy or a PEG and turn the narrative on its head. The narrative needs to be, “What is the intensive care team doing to avoid the tracheostomy?. What is the intensive care team doing to wean this man off the ventilator and the breathing tube?” That needs to be the narrative, very different narrative.

If your loved one ends up with a tracheostomy or ends up without a breathing tube and being extubated, that’s like going west or going east, two completely separate directions. One is, most of your problems are gone or many of your problems are gone. I’m not saying you know that a rehabilitation won’t be lengthy. But if someone is having a tracheostomy, needs to be weaned off the ventilator, needs to be weaned off the tracheostomy, there’s a very different trajectory.

So, if you would go and see the wood for the trees, you are in for a rude awakening. If you don’t get a second opinion, you are in for a rude awakening, I can’t tell you how many families reach out to us when it’s too late. This family in particular reached out still at the right time. But if you are not doing your own research, if you’re not getting a second opinion, you’ll be in for a rude awakening and the intensive care will play yo-yo with you. 

When someone is in intensive care, critically ill, there are dozens of things happening simultaneously. Unless you can piece together the puzzles, make sense out of it, you’ll be in for a rude awakening and you have no peace of mind, no control, no power, no influence and your loved one probably won’t get best care and treatment. Whereas if you get a second opinion, if you work with us with intensivecarehotline.com, you will have peace of mind, you will make informed decisions, you have control, power, and influence so that your loved one gets best care and treatment always.

Intensive care teams have their own agenda and it’s mainly around staying in control of the narrative, stay in control of the movements i.e. how quickly can we empty an ICU bed. You need to be aware of those dynamics because if you’re not aware of those dynamics, once again, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle.

Now, I’ve worked in critical care nursing for 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years. I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care here at intensivecarehotline.com since 2013. I can confidently say that we have saved many lives with our consulting and advocacy. You can verify that on our testimonial section and you can verify it on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section where we’ve done client interviews.

That’s why we help hundreds of clients and members for families of critically ill patients in intensive care over the years, and that’s why we created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care. You can become a member if you go to intensivecarehotline.com if you click on the membership link if you go to intensivecaresupport.org directly. In the membership, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in the membership area and via email, and we answer all questions intensive care related. In the membership, you also have exclusive access to 21 eBooks and 21 videos that I’ve personally written and recorded, once again, making sure you make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence so that your loved one gets best care and treatment always.

I also do one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Zoom, Skype, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation you can’t afford to get wrong. When I talk to doctors and nurses directly, I ask them all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one in intensive care.

I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams.

We also do medical record reviews in real time. We also do medical record reviews after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are suspecting medical negligence.

All of that you get at intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

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

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show and you will get notification for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel or if you are a subscriber to my intensivecarehotline.com email newsletter at intensivecarehotline.com. 

Also, share the video with your friends and families.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.

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