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If you want to know what to do when hospitals revert to blackmailing strategies, stay tuned. I’ve got news for you.

Currently, we are working with a client who has their family member in intensive care for about 14 days. This client is ventilated with a breathing tube and is unable to come off the ventilator tube due to a cardiac arrest and a hypoxic brain injury.

The GCS (Glasgow coma scale) is around 4 to 6 at the most, so they’re not waking up at present. The family still wants to wait, to see whether there’s going to be an improvement so that they can confidently make any decisions that need to be made going forward. The one confident decision that the family has made by now is that they want a tracheostomy, which initially had been offered by the intensive care team after about Day 10 to Day 14 in intensive care.

Just as the ICU was about to proceed with the tracheostomy, the ICU team basically said to the family, “Well, we’re only going to do a tracheostomy if they agree to send their family member out to another facility after the tracheostomy.” That is nothing short of blackmailing, especially in light of the fact that all medical evidence or research is clearly documenting that a tracheostomy needs to be done after Day 10 to Day 14 if someone has shown beyond the shadow of a doubt that a patient can’t be weaned off the ventilator, which is the case in this situation. We have managed to look at the medical records and can confirm that this is the case.

Like I said, this is unheard of, and it’s medical negligence, it’s blackmail, and it is not in a patient’s and family’s best interest. It is in the best interest of the hospital to empty ICU beds, but that should never come at the expense of what is best care and treatment for a patient. That is how far we have gone down the rabbit hole in some hospitals—not in all hospitals. There are still a lot of good things happening in ICU, but we are seeing over and over again, more often now, that hospitals are reverting back to blackmailing tactics and that is just so inappropriate.

It is also disappointing for me as a health professional, having worked in hospitals for 20 years in ICU, that hospitals are reverting back to blackmailing tactics, that is just wrong. Why are doctors and nurses going into the profession if they don’t want to help people and if they’re reverting back to blackmailing tactics so that they can send patients out and maximize their revenue? It is just utterly, utterly wrong.

So, what should this family do in a situation like that? Well, we’ve helped them draft a letter for hospital executive because this needs to be escalated as quickly as possible to another level. A hospital executive, from my extensive experience, I have worked in critical care nursing for or 25 years in 3 different countries where I worked as a nurse unit manager in intensive care for over 5 years. I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 here at intensivecarehotline.com. We’ve advocated for families in intensive care all over the world. I can confidently, very confidently say that we have saved many lives with our consulting and advocacy. You can verify that in our testimonial section at intensivecarehotline.com. You can verify it on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast, where we’ve done client interviews who can verify on the podcast and video podcast that we’ve saved lives for their loved ones.

Coming back to our case today, it needs to be escalated to hospital executive and from my, once again, extensive experience, hospital executives can’t ignore a complaint. The reality is that some hospital executives don’t even know what’s happening on the ground level, and they might actually say to you, “Oh, not under my watch. I want them to do X, Y, and Z.”

So, sometimes we’re also finding there’s no alignment, which is why you need to challenge it. You need to question everything. If you’re not questioning everything, you’ll be fighting an uphill battle, and you might be misled. That is why it’s so important that you can get a second opinion, which we can provide you. That’s why it’s so important that you get guidance.

The biggest challenge for families in intensive care is 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. Don’t be one of those families who don’t know what they don’t know. Do the research, do the work, take responsibility for everything that’s happening, and you will see that your world is changing or will be changing.

We have helped hundreds of members and clients over the years improve their lives instantly and save their loved ones’ lives with our consulting and advocacy. That’s why we created a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care. 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 21 eBooks and 21 videos that I have personally written and recorded. The access to all of these resources will help you to make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence, making sure your loved one gets the best care and treatment always.

I also do 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. I talk to doctors and nurses directly. I ask all the questions to the doctors and nurses that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one critically ill in intensive care. You will see there’s always another level of questions that can be asked, because I have worked in critical care for such a long time. I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation that you simply can’t afford to get wrong.

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, and comment below what you want to see next, what questions and insights you have from this video.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show. 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.

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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