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

So currently, we’re working with a client who has their family member in ICU. The gentleman is in his late 60s, and ICU was giving up on him early on, despite probably causing some events that led to his deteriorating conditions by causing some Stage 3, Stage 4 pressure area sores that have led to sepsis, septic shock, kidney failure and he ended up on dialysis. And today, the client actually played us a phone recording that she had with the ICU, late February 2023, where ICU was pretty much telling her, “Well, you have three days to make a decision whether you can agree to let your loved one die and take him off the ventilator.” Basically, setting her an ultimatum and that is highly illegal. That could be perceived as murder.

And obviously, she got us involved after this phone call and we put a stop to it straight away by reminding the ICU that it’s illegal that patients or medical power of attorneys have to give consent when life support is withdrawn.

Next step was, we advocated for a tracheostomy.  The client had a tracheostomy, and the client is still in ICU. He’s still gravely ill, no question about it. But it might have also been caused by the ICU being negligent early on by letting pressure sores develop. Pressure sores in ICU is really a non-event. It’s often caused by negligence, by lack of staff, by lack of resources, and it’s the job of an ICU to make sure they’ve got adequate resources before they actually admit patients.

So, where we are at to with this gentleman now is obviously looking at medical records. We have also reminded them over and over again that it’s illegal but unfortunately this is what hospitals do. They’re trying to push the envelope. Unless you know your rights, you will just roll over, and you literally will be watching your loved one potentially being murdered if you just give in. It’s unbelievable what hospitals are trying to get away with. But it’s also unbelievable that families in intensive care don’t question and just roll over. 90% of intensive care patients approximately survive and leave intensive care alive. But it’s not so much whether patients are dying in intensive care, or they don’t. They do, a small proportion of intensive care patients survive.

But what is important for families, and this is where hospitals don’t quite get it right, hospitals don’t acknowledge what families want in end-of-life situations. They want acknowledgement of what their loved one would want. And often they do want to go out on a fight. They want to make sure everything is being done, rightly or wrongly, doesn’t matter. It’s about what families and patients want. And hospitals should not ignore it because a lot of conflict is coming from hospitals dismissing families’ and patients’ wishes. And quite simply hospitals using illegal tactics by literally killing people, and it’s just highly inappropriate.

So, again, 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 slowly, we are getting somewhere with this family that the ICU team, we are finally getting in front of them and in front of the hospital CEO and reminding them, “Look, this is why this is such a highly charged situation because you have been completely dismissing the patients and the family’s rights here, and they want to be heard.” So, that’s what we are up to.

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 simply send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

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 and via email and we answer all questions intensive care related.

Also, we do medical record reviews for patients in ICU in real time and also after intensive care, but we highly recommend we do it in real time for you, so you have that crucial second opinion while your loved one is in intensive care because if you don’t have that crucial second opinion situations like the one I just described can develop where you don’t understand the clinical in this situation. A tracheostomy, for example, was an option for this gentleman. We also review medical records after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or simply you want us to look for medical negligence.

Subscribe to my YouTube   channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, comment below what you want to see next, and share the video with your friends and families.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care.