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

Today, I’ll probably go a little bit on a rant because we’ve been professionally consulting with a client in the last 24 hours, who’s just been through a very traumatic experience, and I’ll come to the traumatic experience in a minute. But the tip today really is that, “You cannot start your research early enough” because if you don’t, quite literally can be deadly. Then, I will explain in a moment why.

So, the client that we are working with had their 81-year-old mother in the emergency room couple of days ago. She went in with signs of shortness of breath, signs of chest pain, potentially heart attack, and she was an elderly lady who was frail, but still had a good quality of life the day before she passed away in the emergency department. She was sitting in the sun, had a cup of coffee, and enjoyed time with her husband.

So, she definitely had a good quality of life. But the lady went into the emergency room, surrounded by her son and her daughter. And as soon as she went into the emergency department, she deteriorated very rapidly, and she had to be started on inotropes to maintain a blood pressure that is sustainable with life. But within a couple of hours of the emergency team starting some inotropes or vasopressors, they decided to discontinue the vasopressors and letting her die, because in their mind she had no future “quality of life”.

Cutting a long story short, even though the family was there and challenged the decision, and rightly so, because we looked at the policies and laws in this jurisdiction. I’m not going to expose you what jurisdiction this is in because we help families all over the world when they have loved ones in intensive care or in this situation, in the emergency department. Clearly, the team there, the doctors and the nurses, were breaching policies and laws. And were trying to basically send the family out so they couldn’t challenge, so they couldn’t be with their mother who was literally on her deathbed and then died a few hours later, even though the emergency team there wouldn’t even answer the questions to the family, why they withdraw treatment? She had an advanced care plan that said that she wants everything done to have her life saved in a situation like that.

This is a very sad story and it’s another sign that you need to be prepared, especially if you have elderly parents or if you have maybe a spouse or a child with a chronic condition. You need to be prepared. You need to have an advanced care plan in place so that you can show it to doctors and nurses when you are presenting to an emergency department or to an ICU.

So, this is my quick tip for today.

You can’t start your research early enough. You can’t go unprepared. Have an advanced care plan that clearly states what you want in a situation where you might need an ICU bed because that was another issue that ICU said, “Well, we won’t take this lady.” And one could argue that in the current environment, there are no ICU beds. There are no ICU staff.

Another thing that the family was told was that,  they checked doctors and nurses with the hospital CEO, whether it’s okay to withdraw life support and the hospital CEO signed it off.  Now, we’ve done the research looking on at the hospital’s website, the hospital CEO does not have a medical or a nursing background. So, how can a hospital CEO sign off on letting somebody die?

I’m still trying to find the right words here because even though I have seen similar situations over and over again in the past through the professional consulting and advocacy work that we are doing here at intensivecarehotline.com, it just gobsmacks me in terms of what people can get away with. And it’s very, very sad.

Cutting a long story short, I do believe that this particular family will take legal action here. And I believe, even though I’m not a lawyer, but I do believe from all the work that we’ve been doing, I do believe they have a very strong legal case here but that’s for another day.

I just wanted to give you that quick tip today. Have an advanced care plan, and do your research upfront. What are your rights? Go potentially to a private hospital where you potentially get better treatment, whereas in a public hospital or in a government hospital, resources are often limited and that often feeds into the decision-making of the teams there.

That’s my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org and become a member.

Also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care or after intensive care, if you want to want us to look for medical negligence, we can help you with all of that.

If you like this video, give it a thumbs up, share it with your friends and families, and subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care.

I also do weekly YouTube live videos where you can bring your questions to the livestream. You can dial into the show as well over the phone.

And, click the notification bell, comment below what you want to see next or what questions you have, and then I’ll make a video about it.

Thanks for watching.

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