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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, “Should you hire a lawyer when you have a loved one in intensive care, and there are disputes with the intensive care team?” Now, here is my answer to that. You may need to hire a lawyer after you’ve spoken to us first, because not many lawyers that we’ve come across have any understanding about the clinical issues in intensive care. Unless they have a team of intensive care nurses or intensive care doctors or they have a clinical background themselves, they would be scratching their head around what questions to ask? How to advocate on a clinical level? And this is why, whilst I don’t want to dissuade you from hiring a lawyer, but you need to talk to someone who’s got a clinical background first, and then you can bring in a lawyer.

Now, we have worked with many lawyers as part of intensivecarehotline.com here, but they usually come to us for the clinical insights, because we have a team of specialist intensive care nurses who can dissect and interpret the clinical knowledge. And again, it’s often the lawyer asking us for evidence once we have access to the medical records or once we’ve spoken to the doctors or nurses, then you should bring in a lawyer. Because again, lawyers are not clinical experts. They’re experts within the law, of course, and that’s something we don’t know.

But even we have a lot of documents that are publicly available for our clients about their rights, we are specialized in consulting and advocacy in intensive care, and we have a lot of documents that are freely available on the internet that will help you to take the first steps anyway about your rights when it comes to having a loved one in intensive care, especially when it comes to disputes around end-of-life care policies, around withdrawal of treatment policies, around DNR policies, around access to medical record policies, around medical power of attorney rights, and so forth. So, you can absolutely contact us first. We have a lot of resources available for our clients.

So, that is my quick tip for today.

If you have a loved one in intensive care, go to 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 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, please contact us as well. We review medical records for patients in intensive care. If your loved one is in intensive care and you need to have real life data interpreted now to have a second opinion, you should contact us. We can do it in real time for you, but we also review medical records after intensive care, of course.

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 whether you agree or disagree, what are your questions, and what you want to see next.

Also, tomorrow at 6:30 PM Eastern Time, 10:30 AM Sunday, Sydney, Melbourne Time, I’ll do a YouTube live, “Your Questions Answered Live”, so you can join me there as well and ask your questions live on YouTube, Facebook, LinkedIn, and Twitter as well.

Take care for now.

Thanks for watching.

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