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, we are currently working with a client who has their mother in intensive care. She’s been in intensive care for about three weeks now. She’s ventilated with a tracheostomy. Our client is asking, “How important is it for my mother to get mobilized while she’s on a ventilator with a tracheostomy?” What we’re finding over and over again, most families in intensive care, they don’t know that mobilization for someone on a ventilator with a tracheostomy is even possible.

Now, let me dispel that myth today for one once and for all. Mobilization for a patient in ICU with a ventilator and a tracheostomy should be the goal from Day 1. Even mobilizing a patient on a ventilator with a breathing tube. I have worked in some intensive care units where they’ve done that with much success and where this is possible.

I’ve actually recorded a podcast with Kali Dayton a while ago and she talks about that they have done this over and over again in one of the units that she worked in. So, go and look up the podcast that I did with Kali Dayton a while ago.

Now, here is what’s important. Imagine someone is going into ICU with a breathing tube, ventilated, and they’re put in an induced coma, and they’re ventilated for about let’s just say a week or two weeks. Their muscles are deconditioning very, very quickly, including their breathing muscles, which is one of the main reasons why patients are having difficulties of weaning off the ventilator simply because they are weak.

Picture this, you’re lying in bed for two weeks and you’re doing nothing. Of course, you will get weak. Of course, your muscles will deconditioned. So therefore, when you then wake up patients to come out of the induced coma, their breathing muscles are weak, their arms and legs are weak, they have to learn to move again to use their muscles, and once again, that includes the breathing muscles.

So, therefore, the sooner you can get someone out of bed, sit them up in a chair, the earlier their muscles recover. They are going to be used again, and they’re using their breathing muscles.

I have not seen anyone coming off the ventilator really in over 20 years of having worked in intensive care in three different countries where I also worked as a nurse unit manager for over five years. I haven’t really seen anyone being weaned off the ventilator without mobilization as early as possible.

So, once you start seeing up a patient, the upper body muscles get stronger and therefore, it’s much easier to wean them off the ventilator. Imagine, you’re wanting to run a marathon and you need to train for it. You can’t just run a marathon without training for it. It’s the same with weaning off the ventilator. You can’t be weaned off the ventilator after many days, sometimes many weeks, or even months of mechanical ventilation without training for it, i.e., mobilization, physical therapy, breathing exercises, coughing exercises, a lot of encouragement and ongoing to TLC really for those patients to make that happen.

So, don’t let anyone dissuade you that patients in ICU can’t be mobilized either with a breathing tube or with a tracheostomy. A lot of ICUs have become very complacent in this day and age, and they say, “Oh, they can’t do it. It’s too much work. They do this in other places.” No, you need to do it now so patients can get better, and they can get better quickly. It increases survival rates. It improves outcomes. Don’t let anyone tell you otherwise that they can’t mobilize your loved one.

It takes work, don’t get me wrong. It’s actually taking a lot of work, but it’s definitely doable and it’s usually for all the good outcomes that you can see in real time. Don’t mobilize a patient and the mortality rates are so much higher and patients get depressed, you got to get moving as early as possible.

The only thing that stops the patient from mobilizing is if they’re having fractures, for example, God forbid, or they’re waiting for surgery, if they’re hemodynamically stable, if they’re not bleeding, if they’re not having fractures, nothing should stop them from being mobilized.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you need help, we actually have a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care at intensivecarehotline.com and you can get access if you do go to intensivecarehotline.com and you click on the membership link or you go to intensivecaresupport.org directly.

In the membership, 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, helping you steering this difficult territory that is intensive care, making sure you can ask the right questions, making sure you don’t embark on a lonely road when you have a loved one in intensive care because it is a very lonely road and we are here to help you. We answer all questions, intensive care related. We don’t judge you we just want to help you to get your loved one better so that you can make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

I also offer one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, via Skype, via WhatsApp, via Zoom, whichever medium works best for you. Once again, I help you to make informed decisions, get peace of mind, control, power, and influence. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I ask all the questions you haven’t even considered asking, but you must ask so that once again, you make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence.

I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams so that you have advocacy and clinical representation and once again, that you don’t talk yourself into trouble and that you have a clinician on your team that can challenge the intensive care team wherever necessary and that can ask the right questions. Once again, I know what questions to ask. I know what to look for. I know your rights. I know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care and that will make all the difference.

Now, we also offer medical record reviews in real time so that you can get a second opinion in real time. We also offer medical record reviews after intensive care if you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are simply suspecting medical negligence.

Now, for any of that, 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.

If you like my videos, 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 what questions and insights you have, share the video with your friends and families.

Thanks for watching.

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

Take care for now.