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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM, where we instantly improve the lives for Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care, so that you can make informed decisions, have peace of mind, real power, real control and so that you can influence decision making fast, even if you’re not a doctor or a nurse in Intensive Care!
In the last blog I talked about PART 2 of the
10 signs the Intensive Care team is not genuinely interested in your critically ill loved one and you! (PART 2)
You can check out the last blog by clicking on the link here.
In this week’s blog I want to talk about
The top 3 mistakes you are making in family meetings with the Intensive Care team!
Before I get into today’s topic I want to share a quote with you that I wrote on today’s topic and the quote says
Family meetings in Intensive Care are events that have been specifically set up by Intensive Care teams to further intimidate and scare you!
If you are not already struggling by being outside of your comfort zone, by feeling vulnerable, by feeling frustrated and anxious, a family meeting with the Intensive Care team is probably the last thing you and your family need!
Intensive Care teams have been and are conducting family meetings in Intensive Care 7 days a week, 365 days a year and they know when to ask for a family meeting, they know what to say in a family meeting, they know when to say it, they know how to say it and they know what not to say.
They also know where to hold a family meeting so that they can “play on home ground”, so to speak.
Overall family meetings in Intensive Care are nothing less than cementing and further displaying the “perceived power” and the “perceived authority” of the Intensive Care team.
In a family meeting with the Intensive Care team, you are basically told “ what you and your family need to expect” as it relates to the critical illness of your loved one!
99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care who make no informed decisions, have no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence are blindly going into family meetings with the Intensive Care team and have no idea what to expect or how to position themselves and their critically ill loved one.
The Intensive Care team on the other hand is the master at positioning themselves and positioning your critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis, as well as the care and the treatment your critically ill loved one is receiving or not receiving.
99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care have no strategy to position their critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis nor do they have a strategy to get the care and the treatment they want for their critically ill loved one…
So let’s get into today’s topic!
If you have a loved one critically ill in Intensive Care and your loved one is either
In those difficult and challenging situations, when your critically ill loved one could potentially be “knocking at deaths door” there is a high chance that the Intensive Care team will ask you for a “formal family meeting”.
As I said in the quote in the beginning- most- if not all family meetings in Intensive Care are just set up to cement and further display the “perceived power” and “perceived authority” of the Intensive Care team.
99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care make no informed decisions, they have no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence!
They also don’t know and don’t expect that the Intensive Care team may ask for a “formal family meeting” with you.
The fact of the matter is that the Intensive Care team will ask for a family meeting when it’s convenient for them, not when it’s convenient for you!
How do I know and why should I be telling you all about family meetings in Intensive Care?
After more than 15 years Intensive Care nursing in three different countries where I literally worked with thousands of critically ill Patients and their families and where I have been actively involved in dozens of formal family meetings in Intensive Care I think I have a duty to share with you the lessons that I have learned!
I have also worked as a Nurse Unit Manager in Intensive Care for more than five years and I have been in many formal family meetings, in both capacities, as a bed-side ICU nurse and as a Nursing Unit Manager in Intensive Care.
I know the subject matter well.
I have also been attending many formal family meetings in Intensive Care with some of my clients here in my counselling and consulting practice at INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM
And I get countless emails and phone calls where families in Intensive Care ask me about the family meeting they are about to go to or they tell me how unpleasant the family meeting was etc…
Therefore I do believe that family meetings in Intensive Care are worth more than a blog post in order to help you and your family avoid some of the many pitfalls there are…
To be more specific, with everything that I learned in Intensive Care, the biggest aspect where families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care go wrong and the biggest downfall for families in Intensive Care to go wrong is that they don’t understand the Psychology or the strategies Intensive Care teams have so that they get what they want…
Getting what the Intensive Care team wants is always first and foremost on their mainly hidden agenda,
however getting what you and your family wants must be first and foremost on your agenda and most families in Intensive Care have no clue how to go about it…
In any case, most families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care have no clue when first going into a “formal family meeting” with the Intensive Care team and therefore they really don’t know what to look for or what to expect and they are making a lot of mistakes without knowing that they are making those mistakes in the first place!
Let’s look at the top three mistakes families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care are constantly making when going into “formal family meetings”
with the Intensive Care team that I have seen over and over again!
- You don’t know what to expect in a family meeting with the Intensive Care team
99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care make no informed decisions, have no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence!
When the Intensive Care team first asks for a “formal family meeting” with you and your family, your alarm bells need to go off and you need to be on high alert!
Think about this for a minute.
Why would they ask you for a “formal family meeting”?
To deliver you good news?
Well, as you probably know by now, the Intensive Care team has asked you for a “formal family meeting”
because they want to deliver bad news and they have found that now is the time to put their cards on the table and put pressure on you and your family to agree to certain terms and conditions that are extremely important to the Intensive Care team.
Most of the time it’s all about positioning.
Unlike you and your family, the Intensive Care team knows how to position your critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis, as well as their care and their treatment! In fact, the Intensive Care team is the master at positioning your critically ill loved one’s prognosis, their diagnosis as well as their care and treatment that your critically ill loved one is receiving or not receiving.
They position your critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis as well as their care and their treatment in a light that suits the Intensive Care team and their mainly hidden agenda.
What about you, your family and your critically ill loved one?
If you are like 99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care, you make no informed decisions, you have no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence!
In fact, the unfortunate reality in family meetings in Intensive Care is that Intensive Care teams try and “walk all over” families in Intensive Care…
I have seen this over and over again!
Unless you know what you are doing and unless you and your family know what to expect and unless you know how you need to position yourself, as well as how to position your critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis, as well as the care and treatment of your critically ill loved one, you stand very little ground in those meetings and you’ll get walked all over.
If you are finding that you have been “walked all over” it’s often too late…
For example, I was in a family meeting last week with one of my clients and before the family meeting, the family was told that their loved one “was made NFR” (NFR=Not for resuscitation)
because of their perceived poor prognosis.
By the end of the family meeting, the Intensive Care team took the NFR(Not for resuscitation) order off,
because I had successfully intervened and I knew how to successfully position my Client’s case and get the outcome that they wanted.
With my intimate knowledge about Intensive Care, as well as knowing and understanding the dynamics, the Psychology, as well as my insights in how to position my Client’s case, the Intensive Care team agreed to take off the NFR…
We shifted the dynamics pretty quickly in the family meeting and we shifted the dynamics in the family’s favour because I was able to have a strategy that worked, help position my Client’s case so that they got what they wanted…
Recommended:
The bottom line is that if you go into “formal family meetings” in Intensive Care without knowing what to expect, there is a very high chance that the Intensive Care team will try and walk all over you and unfortunately they often succeed, especially if you belong to the 99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care…
- You and your family have no strategy and no positioning
Here is the next mistake that 99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care are making!
As I said in the beginning, 99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care don’t see a “formal family meeting” coming.
They are often surprised, shocked and uneasy about one of those meetings!
And so they should…
Unless you have a clear path, a clear outcome in what you want to achieve in one of those “formal family meetings”, my recommendation would be to stay clear off a family meeting…
Stay away from a “formal family meeting” until you have
- A clear outcome you want to achieve
- You have a clear strategy in how to achieve it
- You know how to position yourself and more importantly how to position your critically ill loved one’s diagnosis, their prognosis, as well as the care and the treatment you want them to receive
Once you are clear on this, then you can confidently go into a “formal family meeting”.
Once you are clear on this you will also walk into a family meeting with more confidence. It will show in your body language, it will show in your Physiology and it will show in your Psychology and in your mental state. The Intensive Care team will notice!
99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care who make no informed decisions, have no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence go into family meetings blindly, they are scared and they have no strategy, in essence they are doomed to fail and it often costs the live of their critically ill loved one, because often the Intensive Care team will want to “withdraw treatment” as being “in the best interest”
for your critically ill loved one without you and your family having a clue of what’s really happening… and by the time you realize it’s often too late…
- You are not seeking expert help
But worst of all, besides 99% of the families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care not making informed decisions, having no peace of mind, no control, no power and no influence you keep following the Intensive Care team’s lead!
Now, if you want to get outcomes and results quickly, if you want to make informed decisions, get peace of mind, control, power and influence quickly and most of all if you want to challenge the Intensive Care team and have care and treatment for your critically ill loved one on your terms you need to seek expert help!
You need to seek expert help from somebody who knows Intensive Care inside out. Somebody who understands your needs, as well as the situation your critically ill loved one is in, but also somebody who understands the dynamics, the psychology, the hierarchy, the politics and what’s happening “behind the scenes” in Intensive Care.
You need somebody who understands both worlds, your world, your critically ill loved one’s world and the world that is Intensive Care!
You need to dive deeper into the material around critical illness and Intensive Care, as well as the politics and the dynamics around it.
In order to help you quickly with “formal family meetings” in Intensive Care in particular, I have published a number of resources that will help you pretty quickly
And of course, the quickest way to go about it is to engage me personally as your counsellor and consultant whilst you are having a loved one critically ill in Intensive Care and you can do that here
And even if you chose not to engage my services, there is plenty of free information available on my website INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM and there is plenty of free information available through my newsletter, where I answer real questions from real people and where I help them making informed decisions, get peace of mind, get power, get control and get influence when they are faced with one of the biggest challenge of their entire lifetime, having a loved one critically ill in Intensive Care!
How can you become the best advocate for your critically ill loved one, make informed decisions, get PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence quickly, whilst your loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care?
You get to that all important feeling of making informed decisions, get PEACE OF MIND, CONTROL, POWER AND INFLUENCE when you download your FREE “INSTANT IMPACT” report NOW by entering your email below!
In Your FREE “INSTANT IMPACT” report you’ll learn quickly how to make informed decisions, get PEACE OF MIND, real power and real control and how you can influence decision making fast, whilst your loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care! Your FREE “INSTANT IMPACT” Report gives you in-depth insight that you must know whilst your loved one is critically ill or is even dying in Intensive Care! Sign up and download your FREE “INSTANT IMPACT” REPORT now by entering your email below!
In your FREE “INSTANT IMPACT” REPORT you’ll learn how to speak the “secret” Intensive Care language so that the doctors and the nurses know straight away that you are an insider and that you know and understand what’s really happening in Intensive Care!
In your FREE report you’ll also discover
- How to ask the doctors and the nurses the right questions
- Discover the many competing interests in Intensive Care and how your critically ill loved one’s treatment may depend on those competing interests
- How to eliminate fear, frustration, stress, struggle and vulnerability even if your loved one is dying
- 5 mind blowing tips& strategies helping you to get on the right path to making informed decisions, get PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence in your situation
- You’ll get real world examples that you can easily adapt to your and your critically ill loved one’s situation
- How to stop being intimidated by the Intensive Care team and how you will be seen as equals
- You’ll get crucial ‘behind the scenes’ insight so that you know and understand what is really happening in Intensive Care
- How you need to manage doctors and nurses in Intensive Care (it’s not what you think)
Thank you for tuning into this week’s BLOG and I’ll see you again in another update next week!
Make sure you also check out our “YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED” section where I answer your questions or send me an email to [email protected] with your questions!
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Also check out our Ebook section where you get more Ebooks, Videos and Audio recordings and where you can also get 1:1 counselling with me via Skype or over the phone and via email by clicking on the email and phone counselling tabs on the top of the website!
This is Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM and I’ll see you again next week with another update!