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

Today, I want to talk about, “What’s ethical and what’s unethical in intensive care?” And unfortunately, we are exposed to a lot of unethical practices in intensive care, especially when it comes to end of life in intensive care. What I mean by that is simply we have many families call us up and say, “Hey, tomorrow at three o’clock, they want to take my loved one off life support because they think it’s “not in their best interest” to live and have a shot at life.” And that is highly unethical. It’s also illegal, and it’s often breaking the law. It’s often a crime. It’s a criminal act, and ICUs need to be called out on it when and if that happens.

Now, don’t be swayed here, ICUs can’t do that. When families contact us early enough, every time we are intervening, we can put a stop to that. We just hold them to account as clinicians and remind them of laws, guidelines, policies, and procedures in ICU. End of life does not happen in a vacuum.

Now, on the other hand, what is ethical in ICU? I think it’s a good question. Ethically in ICU is when ICUs are making things transparent, when they’re giving you options for treatment, for example, when they’re making things transparent, when they give you access to the medical records, when they are able to give you a second opinion. And that could include simply getting us on the phone or getting myself on the phone and talking to them and asking them questions and making things transparent.

ICU teams from my experience, only tell families not even half of the story. They’re not even telling them half of the things that are going on and, again, that is highly unethical. A lot of it comes down to you knowing what to look for and knowing what questions to ask, of course, as well. But at the end of the day, transparency is something that has gone out of the window in ICU as far as we can tell, especially when it comes to situations in ICU that are not straightforward.

Anyway, I will make a longer video about this another day. I will probably do a YouTube live about it, “What is ethical and what is unethical in ICU?” and give some more examples. But for now, if I wanted to leave you with one thought, if your loved one is in a situation where the ICU team says, “Well, we got to take life support off tomorrow”, that is highly unethical.

That’s 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 send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

Have a look at our membership for families in intensive care. 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 there.

If you need a medical record review, please contact us as well. We review medical records for patients in ICU, but also after intensive care.

Now, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, share the video with your friends and families, 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.

Take care.