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Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: The ICU Team Wants to Remove Life Support for My 60-year-old Dad After Only 48 Hours in ICU, Help! 

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

So, this morning, I was talking to a client who has their 60-year-old dad in ICU after cardiac arrest and potentially hypoxic brain injury, but it’s not been cleared yet. They haven’t evaluated all the CT scans and the MRI scans of the brain that they’ve done in the last 48 hours. And now, the ICU team wants to have a “family meeting” to discuss withdrawal of treatment for a 60-year-old gentleman with cardiac arrest that’s only coming to ICU in the last 48 hours. And because apparently, he’s not waking up since they stopped sedation after 24 hours.

Now, two days in ICU is nothing. Two weeks in ICU is nothing. There are patients in ICU not waking up after two weeks of an induced coma without a potentially brain injury. And why would you then push towards end of life for a 60-year-old man who’s barely been in ICU for two days and they haven’t even done all tests and diagnostics. They’re saying he’s definitely not brain dead. So, how can you advocate that it’s “in the best interest” for this gentleman to die? It boggles my mind that ICUs are that cruel. I have worked in ICUs for over 20 years in three different countries, and it’s unbelievable what’s happening in some ICUs.

There’s a lot of good things happening in ICU, but there’s also a lot of bad things happening in ICU, and we’re certainly trying to point that out here to families in intensive care so that they can get peace of mind, control, power and influence and also get the best outcomes for their loved ones. Also, so that they’ll know how to manage intensive care teams, doctors, nurses in intensive care, how to manage the system, because the system, quite frankly, is broken. Doesn’t matter whether that’s in the U.S., in the U.K., here in Australia, or in Canada, the system is broken. It’s no longer geared towards best interest for clients or patients. It’s geared towards best interest for hospital, which is emptying beds as quickly as possible, even if that means to withdraw treatment on clients or patients prematurely without giving them the best chance for recovery.

You got to put it in context here. The most expensive, the most sought after and the most difficult to staff bed in a hospital is an ICU bed. So, there’s so much pressure on ICU beds. ICU doctors and ICU nurses have left the industry because, quite frankly, they’ve been treated so poorly during COVID and now there’s nobody left working in those high stress jobs and patients, but also the highly qualified doctors and nurses that have left the industry are suffering, too. It’s a vicious cycle and it needs to stop, and patients and families are caught in the midst of it, and it’s not okay to let standards slip in intensive care. It’s not okay because that’s what’s happening when you advocate for a withdrawal of treatment prematurely.

Anyway, we told the client not to give in, to remind the hospital that they can’t withdraw treatment without their consent. End of life does not happen in a vacuum in intensive care. It has to follow procedures and laws. It doesn’t happen in a vacuum. And we also advise them to get a written agenda for the family meeting, and then they can decide whether they want to go into the family meeting or not. You have a choice. Never forget that, that you have a choice when it comes to treatment and options in intensive care. You just need to exercise them, and you need to get the right advice.

That is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to intensivecarehotline.com and call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].

Also, have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in a membership area and via email, and we answer all questions intensive care related, 24 hours a day.

Also, if you need a medical record review for your loved one in intensive care or after intensive care, we can do that for you as well, especially if you want a second opinion, if you are suspecting medical negligence or if you have any answers that the intensive care team is not giving you, we can help you with getting all the answers.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, also, YouTube lives where I answer your questions live on a live stream, click the like button, share the video with your friends and families, click the notification bell, and comment below your questions and insights of what you want to see next.

Thanks for watching.

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

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