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

So, today I want to talk about “How you need to communicate with intensive care teams?” It’s a bit of an advanced tip today. If you’re new to this, you might go, “Oh, we can’t do that, or this is shocking.” But let me explain.

So, the advanced tip today is you should not always go into a family meeting with intensive care teams, and you need to be extremely strategic when talking to intensive care teams because they are strategic. They are extremely strategic.

The biggest challenge for families in intensive care simply 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. Let me repeat that last part, they don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. 99.9% of families, they don’t even know that managing intensive care teams is an option. They believe they have no choice, no control, and that’s how they approach this situation when they have a loved one in intensive care and that’s wrong.

So, let’s go one layer deeper. So, many intensive care teams go come to families and say, “Oh, can we have a family meeting at 3:00 this afternoon? We just want to give you an update.” Many families then say, “Oh yeah, let’s just drop everything.”  Let’s just drop everything. Let’s just get everyone here, whole family, people flying in, driving in whatever. Let’s just stop everything and let’s just talk to the intensive care team because they want to update us.” Well, there’s danger looming in there.

The reason for that is, and I’ve seen it hundreds of times, maybe even more where intensive care teams then sit families down and they say, “Oh look, it’s not looking good and it’s not looking great. We should just stop everything, and we should just withdraw treatment because, it’s “in the best interest of your loved one to die.” I’ve seen it hundreds of times and that is often what’s happening.

Here’s the other thing, if they have good news for you, why would they need to sit you down? They could just say to you in passing, “Oh, well, everything is doing good. Everything is moving in the right direction, and that’s the end of that. Or they could tell you, “Hey, we’re doing everything we can here. Is what we’re doing is why we’re doing it here? How are we doing it?” But that happens very rarely because intensive care teams want to stay in control, and they want to stay in control of the doom and gloom, and they want to stay in control of the outcome.

If intensive care teams told you, “We’re doing this, this, this and this and another two weeks and your loved one will leave intensive care alive and everything will be fine”, and it’s not going to happen, you could sue them for misleading you. So, if they tell you the doom and gloom and they say it’s not looking good, your loved one can die any minute, and then it’s not going to happen. They have managed your expectations really well, but you have to be very careful here.

The alternative to that is whenever intensive care teams ask you for a meeting, ask for an agenda in writing, always. Always. Then you decide whether you want to go or not. In the interim, they can update you. It doesn’t need to be in a meeting. You should get access to the medical records so then you can actually read and follow what’s happening there.

You can hire our service here at intensivecarehotline.com. We can look at the at the medical records and we can interpret the medical records for you and give you that second opinion. That gives you leverage when discussing things with intensive care teams because we can verify for you whether things are accurate or not, whether they’re misleading you potentially, or whether they’re trying to keep your expectations low artificially because they want to stay in control of the narrative.

You have to take charge of the narrative right from the start when you have a loved one in intensive care that you’re not putting up with any second-class treatment that you want everything done, if that’s what you want, if that’s what your loved one wants, of course. Your loved one might have an advanced care directive where they say, “Well, I don’t want certain things “, and that’s ok too.  But if you want everything done, if your loved one wants everything done, then that should be your benchmark and you should not negotiate on that level regardless of what they say.

Intensive care units need beds, and they need to keep lots of beds. One way for them to manage beds is unfortunately, sometimes to let patients pass away, and you need to be very cognizant of agendas of intensive care units. Their worst-case scenario is to look after someone indefinitely with an uncertain outcome. A lot of patients that we are dealing with here at intensivecarehotline.com, they fit that criterion. If you’re watching this, your last one probably fits those criteria.

I’m not blind to the fact that there’s a lot of good things happening in the in intensive care. The vast majority of patients leave intensive care alive; they get on with their life, that’s fantastic! Here at intensivecarehotline.com, we are dealing and helping clients that are in the 10% brackets of intensive care patients where things are not going well. So, just to illustrate that to our audience here as well.

But the advanced tip really is you need to have a strategy when talking to intensive care teams, you can’t leave it up to chance, and you certainly shouldn’t drop everything because intensive care teams are asking you for a meeting. Your next step is to ask for a written agenda. Picture this, any meeting in business in life often has a written agenda and when we’re talking about life or death in intensive care that there’s no written agenda, intensive care teams just dictate, that’s just wrong. That’s just wrong. You should demand that any day of the week. You should get help.

If you’re unsure, one thing that we do here in intensivecarehotline.com, I represent families, our clients, in meetings with intensive care teams because I’ve been in those meetings hundreds of times, either when I worked in intensive care or now as part of my consulting and advocacy.

I’ve worked in critical care for nearly 25 years in three different countries where I also worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years. I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 here at intensivecarehotline.com. Have a look at our testimonial section, I can confidently say that we have saved many lives as part of our consulting and advocacy, help families to “buy time” in ICU, to have more time with their loved ones. You can also look up our podcast section where we’ve done some client interviews.

So, you must be very strategic because intensive care teams are very strategic. If you have no strategy, you are doomed to fail if you are planning to. If you are failing to plan, you’re planning to fail, and it’s the same. If you have a loved one in intensive care, the stakes are extremely high. It’s a once in a lifetime situation that you can’t afford to get wrong.

That’s also why we created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care here in intensivecarehotline.com. You can become a member and surround yourself with the right people that help you with the strategy. If you go to intensivecarehotline.com, and if you click on the membership link or 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 21 e-books and 21 videos that I’ve personally written and recorded making sure you make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence when you have a loved one in intensive care.  It’s an incredibly difficult situation when you have a loved one in intensive care, and you need all the help that you can. Those e-books, videos, and access to me and my team will help you making sure your loved one gets best care and treatment because that’s all you want.

I also offer one-on-one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Skype, Zoom, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly helping you to steer this incredibly difficult territory that is intensive care. I also talk to doctors and nurses directly and I ask all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one critically in intensive care. I will apply all my decades worth of knowledge in intensive care and critical care and my negotiation skills with intensive care teams. I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams, of course, but only if it’s the right thing to go to a to a meeting because often, it’s not the right thing to do to go there in the first place, like I just explained.

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 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 support@intensivecarehotline.com.

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 and share the video with your friends and families.

I also do a weekly YouTube live and if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel, you get a notification there or a subscriber to our email newsletter at intensivecarehotline.com, you get a notification for the YouTube lives there.

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.