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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: How to make the Right Decisions!
Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com with another quick tip for families in intensive care.
Yesterday, I was talking to a client, his 91-year-old dad is in ICU after a stroke and he has been ventilated for two weeks. Now, he hasn’t been waking up and the ICU team is suggesting for the family to either stop treatment, take the breathing tube out and let his dad die or potentially do a tracheostomy and then continue treatment.
Now the client is very unsure of what to do next. And I said to him what would your dad want in a situation like that. Now he says that his dad wouldn’t want to live with a tracheostomy. Now I said to him a tracheostomy might be, might not be a permanent thing, it could be temporarily. At the age of 91 that is unlikely, but it’s not impossible either.
So, I said to my client that whatever decision that you will make will be fine because he’ll be acting in the best interest of his dad, but it’s going to be important that he’s making the decision, right, because he wants to be in control and that’s really important.
We want to consider a situation like this from all angles before rushing into a decision because it sounds like the ICU is in a rush to make that decision potentially wanting to free up a bed in ICU if they withdraw treatment.
So, my tip for today really is about, follow your gut and listen to your instincts what your loved one would want in such a difficult situation. So, what does your loved one want and then make decisions around that?
That’s my tip for today. Take care and I’ll talk to you in a few days.