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

So, today’s tip is about an email that we had from a subscriber who says, “I was told that our family member is staying the same, no improvement on the ventilator, but his cognitive and mental status is improving, and the ICU and palliative care team are pushing to consider stopping medical intervention as well as turning off the ventilator.” Now, what should you be doing in a situation like that where you feel like you are not heard or understood by the intensive care team? Now, my advice here would be that if his mental status is improving, that you should ask your family member what he wants. If he’s cognitive, then I’m sure he can vote with a yes or with a no, whether he wants to have treatment pursued or not, or whether he wants to die. It’s as simple as that.

But what you should also do is getting down to the nitty gritty and getting down to the facts of what’s really happening clinically in intensive care. And you should be asking the right questions, or you should be getting advocacy or consulting from us here at intensivecarehotline.com .

We can educate you on the clinical issues and interpret it to you in a language that you can understand without all the medical jargon around it. And we can break things down for you because it really comes down at the end of the day, to what is actually happening clinically. Why is the intensive care team pushing for palliative care or end of life and why is your loved one the same and his mental status is improving? What else might be improving? But we can’t work that out without actually talking to doctors and nurses directly in ICU or without looking at medical records, ideally do a combination of both.

So do not accept to just simply end-of-life, and I know you’re not, otherwise, you wouldn’t have sent that email. Just ask all the right questions and make sure that your voice and your loved one’s voice is being heard. Just simply ask your loved one. Does he want treatment, or does he not want treatment, or does he want to die? I don’t know from this point of view of with the limited knowledge that I have about your loved one’s situation, whether it’s realistic for him to survive or not. But if he’s waking up and his mental status is improving, that is definitely a good sign. And you should be looking at the positives here and not so much at the negatives.

Get all the facts to us and then we can help you interpreting the situation and making an informed decision. And remove maybe the negativity from the intensive care team and let’s look at the positives, what’s already there.

So, if you have a loved one in intensive care, then I highly suggest and recommend you contact us at intensivecarehotline.com. 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, and we answer all questions, intensive care related in our membership area and via email.

And if you need a medical record review, which we highly recommend in this situation, please contact us as well. We review medical records in ICU in real time or after intensive care. If you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you’re suspecting any negligence, we can help you with all of that.

Subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, share the video with your friends and families, click the like button, click the notification bell, and comment below what you want to see next, or what questions and insights you have from this video.

Thanks for watching.

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