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YOUR INTENSIVE CARE HOTLINE - Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My Mother’s in ICU Ventilated & Breathing Tube Without Nutrition. Should She Be Getting Nutrition?

/ Patrik Hutzel - Critical Care Nurse Consultant / No Comments

Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: My Mother’s in ICU Ventilated & Breathing Tube Without Nutrition. Should She Be Getting Nutrition?

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

Lately, we’ve had two clients in ICU where they did get no nutrition and there was no feeding. Plenty of research shows that early nutrition and early feeding in ICU helps with good outcomes and diminishes or reduces mortality and helps with patients leaving intensive care alive.

Now, once again, the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is 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.

So, in one situation, the ICU team was trying to tell the family that it would be riskier to give nutrition intravenously than giving no nutrition at all. Now, our client’s family member was already malnourished when they went into ICU, and they couldn’t have any enteral feeds. They couldn’t have any nasogastric tube feeds because of bleed. That is fair enough, but what then needs to happen is they need to have TPN. TPN is total parenteral nutrition. ICUs often say, “Well, the infection risk is too high to give TPN.” Whilst there is a higher infection risk for giving TPN, the reality is that without food, we’re all going to die, we’re all starving, and during a critical illness. It’s incredibly important that all the nutritional needs are met regardless especially in both of those situations.

Both clients, the commonality was that ICU wanted to withdraw treatment as early as possible. I said, “Well, if your family member survives, they won’t have any quality of life. We shouldn’t be doing all of this.” And they went the whole nine yards to “sell them” on a withdrawal of treatment and let their loved one die. My question here is always, “What’s the urgency in killing someone? What’s the urgency of letting someone die? Where’s the rush?” Maybe, you can answer that question for yourself.

So, in any case, early feeding is important and is necessary. I will link to some research studies below where you can see that early feeding in ICU helps. You can’t fight a critical illness without getting adequate nutrition. Now, whilst the research studies mainly focus on enteral feeds, and TPN is not enteral feeding, it’s actually intravenous feeding, it still helps, and it should be offered as an alternative if enteral feeds like via nasogastric tube or orogastric tube or PEG/Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy tube is not an option, just to keep that in mind.

Don’t let ICU shortchange you. Do your research. The families that we were dealing with, they were believing the ICU team saying, “Oh, she doesn’t need any nutrition, or your family member doesn’t need any nutrition.” Nothing could be further from the truth. Nutrition in ICU is absolutely critical for good outcomes. Don’t let anybody else convince you otherwise and do your own research from Day 1. You are in a once in a lifetime situation that you can’t afford to get wrong and I’m here to help you.

Now, I’ve worked in critical care for nearly 25 years in three different countries. As a critical care nurse, I have worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years in critical care. I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care here at intensivecarehotline.com since 2013. You can look up on our testimonial section what our clients say. We have saved many lives. I can say that without the slightest hint of exaggeration with our consulting and advocacy. You can also look up our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section where we interview clients, and they can vouch for our work as well.

That’s also why we created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care and you can become a member if you go to intensivecarehotline.com if you click on the membership link or if 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. In the membership, you also have exclusive access to me and my 21 eBooks and 21 videos that I have personally written and recorded, gives you exclusive access to so much knowledge about intensive care that you need when you have a loved one critically in intensive care.

I also do one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Zoom, WhatsApp, Skype, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation that you simply can’t afford to get wrong. I also talk to doctors and nurses directly if you want me to do that. I ask all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one critically ill in intensive care.

I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams.

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

All of that you get at intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or 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, and share the video with your friends and families.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on a show and you will get notification for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel or if you are a subscriber to our email newsletter at intensivecarehotline.com.

If you want your email answered here quickly, leave a donation on the super chat button or leave a donation anyway to support our work so that we can help as many families in intensive care as possible so that we can make as many videos as possible.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.

 

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