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

So, today’s tip is about a client that has had their 70-year-old mother in ICU for about 60 days now. She initially went into ICU with multiple strokes.  She currently has a Glasgow Coma Scale of around 11 and she has been intubated from day one. Just a few days ago, the intensive care team performed a tracheostomy right at around the Day 50 mark.

So, when you have a look at our website, there are several articles on when a tracheostomy should be done. How long can a breathing tube stay in? and so forth. Clearly, the evidence says that after Day 10 to Day 14 of the inability to wean off a ventilator and get out of an induced coma, a tracheostomy should be done. So, why has the tracheostomy only been done at day 50? Why has this lady been kept in an induced coma for 50-odd days? Basically, every day further deteriorating and deconditioning.

Now, the client doesn’t really know which brings me to my main point here is that families in intensive care simply 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.

It’s a classic example that after 50-odd days in ICU, the client all of a sudden realize that something is not right here. Does their own research, comes to our website, and they call us up and say, “Hey, can you tell me what’s going on here?” Well, I can tell you what’s going on.

Furthermore, the client also described that the ICU team has been pushing and pushing for the end of life from day one, wanting to “sell” them on the end of life for their mother, and the client says, “Well, we want to give every opportunity to our mother.” But in the meantime, the intensive care team is withholding opportunities from their mother by not doing a tracheostomy.

We have no reason to believe that they couldn’t do a tracheostomy because of high PEEP (Positive End Expiratory Pressure) or high FiO2 (Fraction of Inspired Oxygen). There’s no indication for that. So, simply delaying tactics and not educating the client on their options.

Another case in point I’ve been saying for years, intensive care teams are not even telling you half of the story of what’s going on unless you know what to look for. Intensive care is a highly specialized area and unless you know what to look for, unless you know what questions to ask, you will have no chance, you will be fighting an uphill battle, and you will get less than desirable outcomes for your family member, which is exactly what’s happening here.

You need to understand that when you have a loved one in intensive care, you are in a once-in-a-lifetime situation that you can’t afford to get wrong because if you do get things wrong, it can heavily impact on your loved one’s life. They either may not survive or if they do survive, they may not have the best quality of life possible.

With this lady here, she should have been weaned off sedation as quickly as possible. If she couldn’t come off the ventilator, do a tracheostomy and then move her towards weaning off the ventilator as quickly as possible.

Now, the family is faced with the dilemma of potentially sending her to a rehabilitation facility, but she’s nowhere near ready for that because she’s way too unstable. But you can see where this is going. If you don’t know what to look for if you don’t know what questions to ask, you will get less than desirable outcomes, you will get very detrimental outcomes for your loved one.

So, that is 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 the membership area and via email and we answer all questions, intensive care related.

I also offer one-to-one consulting and advocacy over the phone via Zoom, via WhatsApp, via Skype, whichever modality works for you. I can also and have represented many, many families in intensive care and family meetings with intensive care teams. I talk to doctors and nurses directly, ask all the hard questions that you haven’t even considered asking, and turn around things very, very quickly for you.

If you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care in real-time and you want a second opinion, we can do that for you very, very quickly as well. Please reach out. If you need a medical record review after intensive care, if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure or if you are suspecting medical negligence, please contact us as well.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, 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 I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Take care.