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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 once again about, perceived end of life and withdrawal of treatment situations. And over the many years of consulting and advocating for families in intensive care, talking to many intensive care units directly as part of our consulting advocacy. And obviously prior to that, having worked in intensive care for over 20 years as a critical care nurse in three different countries where I have also worked for over five years as a nurse unit manager; what we’re finding over and over again is simply that families are being told that their loved one in intensive care won’t survive. And that the odds are not in their favor. And that intensive care teams often say, “you know your loved one won’t survive for more than a few more days, and then they’ll pass away”.

Now, let’s look at some facts here before I will sort of underline everything that I said with some case studies or with some examples. Number 1, when you look at the statistics around survival rates in intensive care, it’s approximately a 90% survival rate. The stats differ slightly from country to country. The stats differ, of course, depending on the admission diagnosis, but still, on average, around 90% of intensive care patients survive.

So the first question, if you are confronted with a grim prognosis saying, oh, your loved one won’t survive for a few more days. Well, why should your loved one be 1 out of 10? You got to ask that question.

Now, next, when families contact us then we obviously advise them that we want to look at medical records. We want to talk to doctors and nurses directly. When we do that, again, in almost all cases, we say, well, there’s no indication that your loved one won’t survive this. And again, it comes back to 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. That’s what it comes down to when it comes to those, what I refer to perceived end of life situations. Not more than that. It’s just a perception. And you look at the facts. The facts are, someone’s heart is beating, someone is on a ventilator, the liver’s working, the kidneys are working. The brain may or may not work in intensive care, but they’re alive, and intensive care is a marathon, not a sprint.

Now, granted most intensive care units don’t want to give people the time to recover. They are on the strict timelines. They have budgets to manage, they have beds to manage, they have staff to manage, they have equipment to manage, where overall they have resource management constraints. And that often ties in with what families are being told in intensive care, saying, where intensive care, him say, well, your loved one only has a few more days to live. Whereas in reality, they try to manage expectations and they’re trying to manage beds and money as well. Intensive care beds are in huge demand, so is intensive care staff.

So I hope that really helps you to understand that when you are confronted with a perceived end of life situation, you should get a second opinion as quickly as possible. And, we always advise that you should seek a second opinion from day one so that you really can confirm everything they’re telling you is correct. You can trust but I believe you need to verify. And you can’t have a life or death situation without a second opinion. That borders on insanity as far as I’m concerned.

So that is my quick tip for today.

Question everything and get to the facts and not fiction. Push your own agenda. Your own agenda is the survival of your loved one. And we can help you with that.

Now, 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 an email to [email protected] with your questions.

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.

Also, we help with medical record review for patients in intensive care. So we review medical records for your loved one in intensive care in real time, but also after intensive care. If you want closure, if you have unanswered questions, or if you simply suspect negligence, we can help you find out all about it. But we highly recommend you get that second opinion and review medical records from day one. We can help you with a review.

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.