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Quick Tip for Families in ICU: How to Stop the ICU Team from Inappropriately Withdrawing Treatment?
Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotlline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Yesterday, I was consulting a client who’s got their 79-year-old mother in intensive care. The intensive care team basically told the family that they need to stop treatment on Monday. 12 p.m. Now that’s just absolutely ridiculous. And I, you know, help the client to put a stop to that because clearly there are clinical science that her mother will improve.
So, what’s the lesson here? The lesson here is that you need to always question and that you should never be intimidated if the Intensive care team says they need to stop treatment at a certain time because, that in essence, is killing a patient and could be perceived as murder.
So how do you exercise your rights? When you have a loved one in intensive care and you encounter such a situation or, number one, hospitals and intensive care units always need to follow policies and procedures when they stop life support.
And also, there is a state law for any state you’re in really whether it’s in the United States whether it’s in the United Kingdom or in Australia, New Zealand. There are always laws as well that govern the termination of life support and the law more often than not is on a patient side and not on the hospital side.
So always make sure you exercise your right, especially when it comes to perceived end of life situations and take a look at our case studies at intensitvecarehotline.com. Take the first steps to learn about intensive care just by reading them and we can help you very fast to get the outcomes that you want when you have a loved one in intensive care.
Take care, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.