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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
So my quick tip today is, do you know your rights as a family or as a patient in intensive care? So I can’t tell you the amount of people that come to us here at intensivecarehotline.com and they tell us things like, “Oh, tomorrow at one o’clock, the intensive care team wants to stop life support for my loved one and they’re probably going to die.” Or they say things like, “Oh, the intensive care team has scheduled for a tracheostomy tomorrow for my loved one at one o’clock, what should I be doing?” Or the intensive care team has scheduled a transfer to another hospital or to LTAC or subacute tomorrow at one o’clock what should I do?”
So all those situations have in common, that the intensive care team hasn’t asked you for consent and the intensive care team is clearly not operating in a vacuum. However, they are very good at pretending that they operate in a vacuum.
Nothing could be further from the truth. You as a family, you as a patient have rights and they need to get your consent. If your loved one is in a coma, can’t make decisions for themselves, they need to get consent from a proxy or from a medical power of attorney or from a next of kin.
And if you are a patient in a situation where you can make your own decisions, nothing happens without your consent, without your approval. So do not let the intensive care team run the show without your consent. Make sure you do your research, make informed decisions so that you have peace of mind control, power, and influence.
That is my quick tip for today. Go and check out intensivecarehotline.com. If you have a loved one in intensive care, call us on one of the numbers or send us an email to [email protected].
Like this video, comment down below and subscribe to my YouTube channel for updates for families in intensive care.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I’ll talk to you in a few days.