Podcast: Play in new window | Download

Subscribe: Apple Podcasts | RSS

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

So, at the moment, we are working with a client who has their elderly mother in ICU on a ventilator with a breathing tube with pneumonia. Now, the ICU team should really take her for a CT (Computerized Tomography) scan to see what’s exactly happening with her pneumonia. And they’re saying that it’s too challenging for her to go to a CT scan, let alone in an MRI (Magnetic Resonance Imaging) scan, because that would be helpful as well to see exactly what’s going on with her pneumonia. But the ICU team says it’s too complicated and so forth.

Now, the client is also requesting to send his mother to another hospital in a metropolitan ICU, which is not too far away. And again, the ICU says that it’s too dangerous for his mother to be transferred. Now, bear in mind, this is in a small sort of country town ICU where there’s probably very little expertise available compared to a big metropolitan ICU.

So, I can assure you, after having worked in intensive care for over 20 years in three different countries, that a CT scan for someone on a ventilator with a breathing tube is no big deal considering that patients on ECMO (extracorporeal membrane oxygenation) are being transported, flown in helicopters, flown in airplanes, all around countries, and sometimes around the world in very, very critical conditions on multiple inotropes or vasopressors and so forth.

So, for the ICU to say that the patient can’t go to a CT scan or to an MRI scan, it’s just a whole lot of nonsense. Again, there’s patients on ECMO, for example, going for CT scans and MRI scans even though they’re incredibly unstable. Our client’s mother is not on inotropes or vasopressors, so it’s no excuse.

So, it comes back to what I keep saying over and over again that the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is simply that they don’t know what they don’t know. They don’t know what to look for. They don’t know what questions to ask. They don’t know their rights, and they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And it keeps coming back to that over and over and over again.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

Question everything, trust but verify. You got to verify everything. You got to counteract intensive care teams agendas. You got to read between the lines. You got to understand how ICUs operate, what’s important for them. Don’t let them create the narrative. Create your own narrative and challenge the narrative and we can help you with all of that here at intensivecarehotline.com.

Now, 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 simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in a membership area and via email, and we answer all things intensive care related.

If you need a medical record review, please contact us as well. And we can help you with a medical record review while your loved one is in intensive care or after intensive care, especially if you suspect medical negligence.

That’s my quick tip for today.

Thanks for watching.

Please subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, share the video with your friends and families, give it a thumbs up, give it a like, click the notification bell, and comment below what you want to see next, or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thanks for watching.

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