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

So I had an email yesterday from Sabrina and Sabrina says that her husband has been in intensive care now for three months. Initially went in with pneumonia and after a heart attack, and he ended up on a breathing tube, ended up on a ventilator, then eventually had a tracheostomy because he couldn’t be weaned off the ventilator and the breathing tube.

So he ended up with a tracheostomy and he’s now stuck in ICU for over three months and Sabrina says that her husband always gets agitated after weaning trial, then he needs to go back on the ventilator because he’s not quite ready yet to be weaned off the ventilator. He gets so agitated and worked up because of anxiety being in ICU, being surrounded by doctors, nurses, in an environment where he has no privacy, no dignity and so forth.

So often, he then ends up being sedated again, and he takes two-step backwards because sedation puts people asleep and robs them off their strength really, and the encouragement to be weaned off the ventilator.

So Sabrina is at her wit’s end and she’s asking, what should she do and how can she help her husband in this desperate situation?

Well, Sabrina, the answer is that, you should be looking at intensive care at home because what will happen is, with intensive care at home, your husband will get out of this depressing, sterile and limiting environment, quite frankly, where he gets put under sedation over and over again. Your husband is probably anxious because he’s in a strange and foreign environment and he’s not at home. So imagine your husband goes home with a service like intensive care at home.

He can have the same comfort at home probably much better care because he’s in his own environment and people work within your boundaries and within your environment and your husband will probably be much happier and there’s a higher chance he can come off the ventilator once he’s at home because he’s in a familiar environment, there’s no added on stress for you because you can be at home at the moment like you shared in your email.

You’re spending day and night in ICU and by using intensive care at home, your husband and your family will be having peace of mind.

So also on an economic level, an intensive care bed costs around five to $6,000 per bed day, in intensive care at home is about half of that cost. So it’s a win-win situation for everyone. You’re cutting the cost of an ICU bed.

You and your husband will be in an environment where you’d rather be and he can be weaned off at home, in the comfort of his own home and you’re saving the funding bodies money and you’re creating an ICU bed for another critically ill patient in ICU.

So that’s my quick tip for today. Check out intensivecareathome.com. Subscribe to my channel, like the video and comment below what questions that you have.

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