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

So today, I had an email from Sarah who says, “The doctors want to send my mother to a nursing home after a tracheostomy. She’s in a natural coma. I don’t want her to go to a nursing home. What are my options?” Well, Sarah, I’m very sorry to hear about your mother’s situation that they want to send her to a nursing home with a tracheostomy, that sounds worse than going to LTAC (Long Term Acute Care).

You haven’t shared where you are, whether you’re in the United States, or in Canada, or in the U.K., or in Australia. So, I’m not sure which location you’re in, but the reality is that nursing homes generally speaking, have no idea how to look after a tracheostomy and patients have died because they’ve gone to the wrong places. They’ve gone into their own hands.

So, what’s the best case here? Now, I’m not advocating that your mother should stay in the hospital. What I am advocating for is that your mother should go home, if that’s an option for you, of course. I don’t know whether your mother could go home, whether she could live with you, whether she could live with other family and then bring Intensive Care at Home in.

So, when you look at intensivecareathome.com, you will see that there is a service for tracheostomy patients at home so that they can safely live at home, but it has to be done safe. It has to be done by services that are third-party accredited so that your mom is going into the right hands.

Now, it also has to be done evidence-based. Hospitals are all about providing evidence-based care and so is Intensive Care at Home. If you look at the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines at intensivecareathome.com, you will see that the only safe way to look after patients at home with ventilation and tracheostomy is to use 24/7 critical care nurses with a minimum of two years ICU or critical care nursing experience. Everything else is not safe. This is evidence-based. It’s evidence from over 25 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Germany and over 10 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Australia. So, it’s all evidence based.

Your mom going to a nursing home is probably a death sentence. The reason I’m saying this so confidently is we have seen patients over the years die in hospitals even when they didn’t have the one-to-one nurse-to-patient ratio that is critical for someone with a tracheostomy even if they’re not ventilated. This is once again, all in the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines.

So, what’s your next step here, Sarah? Your next step is to go to intensivecareathome.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected] and then we can help you from there. I hope that helps you with your dilemma here.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help and you need similar advice, 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 and families for Intensive Care at Home 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 questions, intensive care and Intensive Care at Home related.

I also offer one-to-one consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I represent you in family meetings for similar issues that I’ve just discussed. We are specialized on consulting and advocacy for families in intensive care. It’s critical for you that if you are talking to intensive care teams directly that you have someone on your team that speaks the intensive care language. I ask all the questions you haven’t even considered asking and they are critical to be asked. If you’re not asking them, you’ll be pushing a rock uphill and you won’t be getting anywhere.

Now, we also review medical records in real-time so that you can have a second opinion in real time, please contact us for that as well. We also review medical records after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are simply suspecting medical negligence.

Now, if you’re finding my videos valuable, subscribe to my YouTube channel, give the video a like, click the subscribe button, share the video with your friends and families, and comment below what you want to see next or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.