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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!
This is another episode of “YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED“ and in last week’s episode I answered another question from our readers and the question was
How to Have the Power to Refuse If My Ventilated Mom in ICU Will Be Pushed Out To LTAC?
You can check out last week’s question by clicking on the link here.
In this week’s episode of “YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED”, I am here with a live stream today, where I want to answer your questions if you have a loved one in intensive care. And this is one of the most commonly asked questions for families in intensive care and it’s a question that we get all time. And today’s live stream is about the 10 Things the Intensive Care Team is Deliberately Withholding from You.
10 Things the Intensive Care Team is Deliberately Withholding from You – Live Stream!
Wherever you are, welcome to another intensivecarehotline.com livestream.
My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com. I’m the founder and editor of intensivecarehotline.com, and I’m also a critical care nurse consultant in intensive care and for families in intensive care. And I’m an advocate and consultant for families in intensive care.
Welcome to another livestream. Today’s livestream is about 10 things the intensive care team is deliberately withholding from families in intensive care. And that is you. If you are watching this, I know you have a loved one in intensive care and you’re seeking answers. You’re seeking help. You’re seeking advice. More importantly, you’re looking for results.
Before I dive right into it, you may wonder what makes me qualified to talk about this topic… Hi, Helene. Nice to see you again. Welcome back here on this live stream.
What makes me qualified to talk about this topic? What makes me qualified to talk about this topic is that I worked in intensive care for over 20 years in three different countries. I also worked as a nurse unit manager in intensive care for over five years, and I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care for over 8 years now in my private practice. And I’m also running a company called Intensive Care At Home, where we look after long-term intensive care patients at home.
So I want dive right into this very important topic today. I want to give you as much information as I can. Let’s dive right into the 10 things that the intensive care team is deliberately withholding from you and for families in intensive care.
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Number one is intensive care teams are withholding much details from you. What I mean by that is whenever we work with families in intensive care, we ask questions. We ask questions to the intensive care team, but we also ask questions to the families and try to get out as much information as we can. And clearly we’re always seeing that it’s not broken down to enough details. I’ll just give you a quick example. People come to me and they say, “Look, my loved one is ventilated. My loved one is on 50% of oxygen.” And then I say, “Well, that’s only one number you need to know. That’s one number out of 20 numbers you need to know.” And it also comes down to breaking down questions from head to toe really, when a patient is in intensive care and intensive care teams are not doing that. They’re deliberately withholding that from you because the more you know and understand, the more power you have and the more leverage you have. The intensive care team don’t want that. They want to make decisions by themselves. I’ve written a whole blog post about this, a very lengthy blog post about what questions you need to ask in intensive care. And that blog post is available on our website. Of course, it also comes with a video.
Number two, the next thing that intensive care teams are deliberately withholding from you are your rights. Clearly, you have rights. If I had a penny for every family that comes to me and says, “Intensive care teams tell me I can’t ask questions. Intensive care teams tell me I’m not allowed to do this. I’m not allowed to take pictures. I’m not allowed to look at medical records in particular.” It’s ridiculous. So you have every right to ask questions. You have every right to look for medical records. Most families come to me, or come to us, or to my team members as well and they say, “Look, they’re not allowing us to look at medical records.” And I called crap on all of that. You as the medical power of attorney have every right to look at medical records. There’s not one client that we haven’t managed to help them to get medical records. There’s not one. So, you need to know your rights.
Again, if I had a penny for every family that comes to us and says, “Look, they just told us that my loved one is DNR against our wishes, against my consent, against my loved one’s consent.” Or if I had a penny for every family that’s coming to us and says, “Oh, tomorrow at one o’clock they want to stop life support and my loved one is going to die.” It is your right to stop that. Intensive care teams are so good at pretending that they operate in a vacuum, but they’re not operating in a vacuum. They have to follow policies, procedures, guidelines, laws, every day of the week, 24 hours a week. They’re not operating in a vacuum. So you have rights and you need to exercise them.
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Number three, the next thing intensive care teams don’t tell you is that the mortality rate in intensive care is less than 10%. Why is this important? Well, when I say mortality rate is less than 10%, I mean that less than 10%… No, I should turn it the other way around. More than 90% of patients in intensive care survive. More than 90% of patients in intensive care survive their intensive care stay, which means that the odds are in your loved one’s favor.
Now, I’m well aware of that when you have a loved one in intensive care that the intensive care team is giving you all the negativity in the world, they’re giving you all the doom and gloom. I’m well aware of that. I worked in the environment long enough to understand that, but you’ve got to look at the facts, not at gospel. You’ve got to look at the facts and the facts say that more than 90% of intensive care patients survive.
I’ve just actually seen a recent new study here in Australia and New Zealand about mortality rates in intensive care has actually gone up in the last few years. Has actually gone up to 93, 94%. And I’m sure it’s the same in the US or in the UK or in Canada. And the reason mortality rates are going down and survival rates go up, intensive care units are getting better and better at saving lives, which also in retrospect, puts pressure on their resources, which means that intensive care beds are even more scarce, which puts more pressure on the system. And that’s a big challenge. Don’t get me wrong. I am well aware of the pressures of an intensive care unit, but I’m also well aware of the pressures that you are under as a family and it’s a battle. Unfortunately, it’s a battle. Especially now with COVID, intensive care units are under even more pressure. I mean, intensive care units were under pressure before COVID and now it’s even worse. But the good news is survival rates have gone up, mortality rates have gone down.
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Now, please bear in mind. I am not talking about what quality of life looks like after surviving ICU. I’m not talking about that. I’m talking about survival rates. Can a patient leave intensive care alive? I’m not saying what that looks like. I’m not saying the challenges that a patient needs to overcome, and the family needs to overcome to have a recovery that’s meaningful for them and for their loved ones. I’m not talking about that. I’m just talking about survival rates. And I’d just leave you with that.
I could do a whole new another live show about meaningful recovery, about options after surviving intensive care and so forth. Also, on that note with survival rates in intensive care, and especially with the intensive care team being all negative and so forth. Please bear in mind that intensive care teams have no idea what a patient’s life looks outside of ICU. That’s not their area of expertise. They’re just projecting something that they have no idea about. Their area of expertise is intensive care and let them practice intensive care, but let them not look outside of intensive care. That is not their area of expertise. When it comes to life outside of intensive care. You’ve got to talk to the specialists. You’ve got to talk to organizations or families that deal with people after intensive care.
Next, number four, they’re not telling you about treatment options or not about all treatment options. Case in point. At the moment, we are dealing with many COVID patients in intensive care and those COVID patients, especially when they end up with COVID pneumonia and then COVID ARDS, often go into prone position. They go into the standard therapy at the moment, which is often Remdesivir. And then if that doesn’t work, especially with COVID ARDS, the next step should be ECMO.
Now, I can’t tell you how many families have come to us and said, “Look, my loved one is in intensive care, COVID ARDS. They’re proned, they’re getting Remdesivir, they’re not improving. What do we do? Intensive care team is telling us they’re going to die. They need to withdraw treatment,” blah, blah, blah. And then I say, “Well, have they told you about ECMO?” And they’re gobsmacked. They don’t know about ECMO.
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Again, case in point, we’ve just worked with a client, or we are working with a client that was proned, ended up on ECMO after COVID ARDS and they’re now surviving. There’s no guarantee for that, of course, but chances are increasing. And there are numerous other examples that I can give you where we, as consultants and advocates, teach you about treatment options and put them in front of the intensive care team and they’re just not open and transparent. And again, it all comes back to why are they doing that? They need to manage their bed, they need to manage their budgets, they need to manage their staff. It all comes back to that. The more power you have, the more you are impacting on their day-to-day running of their business, of their intensive care, of their staff and so forth. It’s all about empowerment. All I want to do here is empower you and get answers to your questions.
Helene, I’ve got your questions, but I just want to whizz through the 10 things first, and then I’ll get back to your question at the end of this video.
Again, with treatment options, 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 questions to ask, they don’t know what to look for, and they don’t know their rights. They don’t know how to manage doctors and nurses in intensive care. And that comes back to the treatment options as well. You need to educate yourself, you need to do your own research, and you need to challenge the intensive care team on every level, because they will challenge you on every level.
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- YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS CRITICALLY ILL IN INTENSIVE CARE! (PART 1)
- YOU DON’T KNOW WHAT YOU DON’T KNOW WHEN YOUR LOVED ONE IS CRITICALLY ILL IN INTENSIVE CARE! (PART 2)
Next, number five, they’re not talking to you about all the secret meetings they’re having behind the scenes. They’re not telling you about that the doctors and often the nurses in charge have a meeting every day about patients. And they’re not telling you that in those meetings, they’re strategizing what they tell you, what they don’t tell you, and they’ve got the game plan mapped out for your loved one already. And for you too, for the family, how to get their outcomes.
The biggest challenge for an intensive care unit, or the worst-case scenario is to look after a critically ill patient indefinitely with an uncertain outcome. That’s their worst-case scenario. That means they’re occupying an intensive care bed that could be used for somebody else. It means they often have to deal with a “difficult family” and they want to minimize that as much as possible. And that’s why they’re not telling you about the meetings that they’re having at least once a day, often multiple times a day, where they strategize how they manage certain patients, how they strategize what they tell you, their communication strategy with you to basically manage you. And your challenge is to manage them. And again, that’s where we can help you. We can help you manage the intensive care team so they don’t manage you. Very important. You can’t control what’s happening to you, but you can control how you respond. And that’s the business we are in. We are in the business of responding on your behalf or with you, or we are in the business of telling you how you should respond to get maximum outcomes for your loved one.
Next, number six, they’re not telling you about the economics, bed management, staff management in intensive care, because it all ties right in with what they tell you.
When I worked in intensive care, I’ve been in numerous situations where families, patients have been put under pressure to either move onto ward prematurely or to die prematurely because intensive care units need the beds. It’s too expensive. And I knew for a fact that sometimes end-of-life situations, they were happening because the next day, ICUs knew they had five other admissions coming in and they needed the beds. That’s just the unfortunate reality.
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End of life is an economical decision often, not so much a clinical decision. It can be a clinical decision, but it more often than not is an economic decision. It’s a bed management decision. It’s a staff management decision, and it’s also a power gain. If we, as intensive care units, tell families, “Well, your loved one is going to die,” that’s a power trip. That is a power trip. It’s very unfortunate, but that’s the reality that every day in intensive care, all over the world, there’s euthanasia happening, which is the hastening of death and it’s illegal, or I believe there’s also murder happening. And I know those are strong terms to be used, but the reality is I’ve seen it, I’ve seen it happening.
There’s a lot of good things happening in intensive care. I need to stress that too. There’s a lot of good things happening, but I’ve seen the good, the bad, and the ugly. And unfortunately, we’re not focusing on the good things here because good things happen in intensive care, people move on, get on with their lives. Unfortunately, the world that we live in here is you come to us at intensivecarehotline.com because you have a massive challenge that you need a resolution for. And you know that the intensive care team is not telling you the truth, you know that you need to seek outside help. And that’s the purpose of this show to help you, deal with all of those challenges.
Next, number seven, they’re not telling you about specialists in intensive care or specialists that they need to get into intensive care. Case in point, last week, we were working with a client who had their loved one in a “perceived end-of-life situation”. Again, the intensive care team was pushing for end of life. They were pushing to stop life support and we put a stop to that just simply by advocating for the family, advocating on a policy and on a legal level. And that was successful. The intensive care team stopped withdrawing treatment and the client’s family member was in atrial fibrillation. And that had never been looked at since the client’s father had been in intensive care, because all the intensive care team wanted to do, wanted to withdraw treatment and provide “comfort care”, which is a euphemism for euthanasia or potentially even for murder. Because what’s happened in retrospect, after we made sure that their loved one gets full care and treatment, then the atrial fibrillation was treated by a cardiologist. You need to get the specialists involved depending on your loved one’s condition.
For example, if your loved one has an anoxic brain injury, God forbid, you need to get the neurologist involved. If your loved one has had a craniotomy after a brain bleed, you need to talk to the neurosurgeon. If your loved one has kidney issues, you need to talk to the nephrologist. So it’s critically important that you don’t only talk to the intensive care teams. It’s critically important that you get specialists involved because specialists are often have a different view compared to the intensive care teams. Intensive care teams only focus on managing their beds, managing their budgets and so forth, whereas the specialist also understands what’s happening outside of ICU and that’s why you need them urgently involved in your loved one’s care and treatment.
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You will also often find that when intensive care teams are pushing for end of life, you will often see that the specialist, a cardiologist, a neurologist, a nephrologist will bring in a different perspective. They can talk about what life looks like outside of intensive care assuming they’re going to survive. Critically, critically important that you get the specialists involved.
Number eight, they’re not telling you about an objective view about quality of life. Now when intensive care teams tell you that your loved one won’t have any “quality of life” outside of intensive care if they were to survive, that’s a very, very subjective point of view. And if they can have a subjective point of view, you are entitled to also have a subjective point of view because we know what families want. Families don’t care so much about quality of life. They want their loved ones to survive. They want their loved ones to have a second chance at life and then see where quality of life takes them. And again, it comes back to my earlier point where I say intensive care teams don’t know about what life looks like outside of intensive care.
With services now like our service, Intensive Care At Home, there is no issue with looking after intensive care patients at home. Does that provide quality of life? I argue, yes. Does it provide quality of end of life? I argue, yes. Bottom line is it gives people, clients and families, choice, comfort, quality of life. And it’s not up to me or to the doctors or to anyone to judge what quality of life should look like after intensive care or what quality of life should look like after all. It’s not for me to judge. My job is to inform you and to give you options. And then you can make with that information, whatever you feel is appropriate for your situation.
I all also believe that, as I said, intensive care teams don’t know enough about life outside of intensive care. They just see the high acuity in intensive care and they see what needs to happen in intensive care, but they don’t know and they can’t see where it leads to. And that the quality of life outside of intensive care, even on a ventilator with services like Intensive Care At Home is a life worth living. And that’s where intensive care teams are incredibly judgmental. Well, you are not judgmental. You are only doing what is in the best interest of your family and your loved one, and that’s what you should run with.
Number nine. I have mentioned it before in this video, but I made a whole point out of it. Number nine is, they’re not the experts what life looks like outside of intensive care. They’re just simply not the experts on that. Intensive care units are very good and are getting better at saving lives. That’s their job. Population is getting older. People live longer generally speaking, and that brings a whole set of different issues with it. Again, I’m not here to judge on what people want. I’m just here to educate people about the space that they live in and operate in. And the reality is that intensive care teams are not the experts for what life looks like outside of intensive care. Again, comes back to the mortality rates and the survival rates. Survival rates are going up, which means with all the issues that come from an intensive care stay, which is deconditioning, sometimes brain injuries. There are a whole list of issues that happen after an intensive care stay. That can’t be denied. And it does impact on quality of life after intensive care. But again, intensive care teams are not the experts of what life looks like after intensive care.
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Now, quick shout out to my friends over at icusteps.org. You should seek out icusteps.org. This is a website for ex-ICU patients and you can actually read what life looks like after intensive care for some ex-ICU patients. What I can tell you is that with what we are doing with intensivecareathome.com, we know what life looks like for some patients after intensive care. And we know that life looks good for them. They are at home. They’re not in intensive care any longer. They have the intensive care nurses coming to their home 24 hours a day and life is so much better for them. But life is also so much better for the families because they can stop going to a hospital. Very simple, very simple.
Number 10. And if you stick with number 10, I also have a bonus point number 11, if you stick right until the end. And Helene, I haven’t forgotten about your question, but I will come to that at the end, after I’ve gone through all of the points. I just don’t want to lose my train of thought.
Number 10 is, they are not telling you about services like Intensive Care At Home. You should check out intensivecareathome.com, where we are running a service Intensive Care At Home, where we look after long-term intensive care patients at home. And those patients have overall a very good quality of life. The alternative for those patients would be two things. The alternative for them would be to live in ICU. ICUs don’t want that. We know that. And the other alternative for them would be to die. So we are saving lives by providing the service Intensive Care At Home and ICUs don’t want to tell you about it, because again, it takes a little bit of time to set up Intensive Care At Home. It’s not sort of an overnight setup. It often takes a few weeks of preparation. Intensive care units don’t have the time to keep a patient in intensive care for many weeks. So again, that’s why they don’t tell you about it. Also, intensive care units believe the only place where intensive care should happen is in hospital. And again, that’s just a whole lot of crap because Intensive Care At Home has been around now for eight years. And it’s been around in Europe, in German-speaking countries for decades. So intensive care units know this has been around for a long time and the concept has been proven.
And, intensive care units, if they were smart, we are cutting the cost of an intensive care bed by 50%. It’s a win-win situation that we’re providing, plus we are creating a free bed for intensive care units, which is what they want. So we are actually creating a win-win situation for you, for your family member, for intensive care units, for the hospital system, for everyone. And yet they don’t want you to know about it because it puts power back in your seat. It puts power back in your shoes and they don’t want that. But all power to you, that’s what we are here for today to empower you, making sure you understand intensive care, making sure you understand the mechanics, the moving pieces, and you can leverage that to your own good.
Again, go and check out intensivecareathome.com if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home, especially if they’re long term. We do this for adults and for children. At the moment, we are predominantly in Melbourne and in Sydney, Australia. We are getting funded through the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), through the TAC (Transport Accident Commission) here in Victoria, through the DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs), and also through hospitals directly. So go and check that out. We are not in the United States yet. For all of my friends in America, we are coming to America once this COVID business is over, but we are not there yet I’m afraid. In the meantime, if you are in America or in the UK, go and check out intensivecarehotline.com, where we can help you with consulting and advocacy in the meantime.
Last but not least, here’s my bonus tip number 11. Thank you for staying on to the end anyway. ICU staff are desensitized. They are desensitized. If they have an ICU patient pass away, if they have an ICU patient end up with a brain injury, with a stroke with dramatic complications, ICU teams are desensitized. They don’t have the empathy anymore. Some people do. Don’t get me wrong. There are some people, but I do believe if someone dies in ICU, it’s just another number, unfortunately. And once I realized that, I needed to get out because then I realized, “Okay, if I’m as desensitizes everybody else around me, I can’t work in this environment any longer.” I needed to step out to build on my intensive care skills. Now helping families, that gives me the ultimate satisfaction. Helping families to take their loved ones home with Intensive Care At Home that gives me the ultimate satisfaction. Just bear in mind, they are desensitized. They are talking to you from a point of, “Oh yeah, I’m just looking after another patient.”
For you, it’s your mom. It’s your dad. It’s your spouse. It’s your child. It’s your brother. It’s your sister, but that’s not how they look at your loved one. And I can tell you from experience, you have a patient in ICU, another patient on a ventilator. So from a health professional point of view in intensive care, it’s like, “Oh yeah, what do we need to do with the ventilator? What do we need to do with the medications? What do we need to do with the ECMO? What do we need to do with the nutrition?” That’s unfortunately how health professions look at patients in intensive care.
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They’re not looking at Mrs. Smith that was going to work two days ago. They’re not looking at, oh, this is Mrs. Miller. Mrs. Miller was looking after the grandkids two days ago and she was going to the bowling club and she was doing the grocery shopping. I know that’s how you look at your loved one, but that’s not how intensive care teams look at patients in intensive care. And this is something you’ve got to keep in mind when you’re dealing with intensive care teams that they’re completely desensitized and you have to remind them, “Hey, this is my dad. This is my mom. This is my sister. This is my brother. This is my spouse. They were doing normal things two days ago, just like you and I, and now they’re in this situation. Help me get them out of intensive care. Help me get them better. Help me get them back to where they were.”
So these were the 10 things that intensive care teams deliberately withhold from you. Hopefully I was able to share some lights. Thank you saying right till the end.
Helene, I’m coming to your question now. You’re saying when your mom was in ICU, “It was like a horrific war zone for me to keep my mom alive and get her back home.” Yeah, I can imagine. I mean, that is probably the right expression to use, that intensive care units are like war zones. I agree with that. They are like war zones. And especially now with COVID, it’s getting even worse. I think some of what I mentioned that people are desensitized is like working and operating in a war zone. Some health professionals might have even post-traumatic stress.
Cristen, you have a question. Please type your question in the chat pad so I can get right onto it. Please ask your question.
So, some intensive care health professionals might be in post-traumatic stress themselves and they don’t even recognize it.
For everyone still on this video, on this call, please type your questions in the chat pad so I can get to them. Please type them in.
Alternatively, you can also call me live on the show if you want. If you’re in America, you can call me on (415) 915 0090. That’s again, (415) 915 0090. I can answer the question live on the show here, if you don’t mind. But in the meantime, just type those questions in the chat pad.
There are so many moving pieces and unless you ask the right questions… When we consult clients in intensive care, it’s often a case of, “Oh, I didn’t know that. I didn’t know that.” Yes, of course you didn’t because it’s such a highly specialized area. Intensive care is such a highly specialized area that it takes decades of experience to really ask the right questions and recognize the patterns. And once you recognize the patterns, you can then predict what’s going to happen. I can often predict what’s going to happen next.
Cristen, your question is, “My mom had a tracheostomy done the day before she passed away. I was told they put her on BiPAP. Is that normal? I did hear you can no longer breathe from your mouth so I was concerned if that could be.”
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No, no. What might have happened here, Cristen, is… I don’t know why your mom has passed away, but normally a tracheostomy, if anything, prolongs life. A tracheostomy, if anything, gives people a second chance. There’s not enough information in your question, Cristen, to really say what happened there. That’s why I’m saying Cristen, the devil is in the detail.
People come to us often and they say, “Look, I’ve got my loved one in intensive care. They are on a ventilator. They’re on 50% and they’re on fentanyl.” And that’s all the information they give us. And then they ask, “Will they survive?” And I say, “I really don’t know because you’re only giving me not even 10% of the information I need to know in order to guide you with this.” It’s probably fairly similar with your question there, Cristen, that it’s simply not enough information in terms of saying what has happened there. We would need to look at the medical records. We would need to understand the background information. What medications has she been on? What was the diagnosis? Was there an underlying condition? Was there surgery? It would need a lot more information to answer your question there, Cristen. I’m very sorry that I can’t really answer that question at this point. Again, comes back to that the devil is in the detail in intensive care. The devil is in the detail.
Helene, you’re saying, “suffering with complex post-traumatic stress”. Yeah. I’m not surprised. And again, maybe even myself after 20 years, maybe I’m in some sort of post-traumatic stress myself. That might be one of the reasons why I’m doing this. It could be also therapeutic for me to talk about all these things.
So Cristen, you are now saying that your mom was also put on CPAP, then had to put her back on the vent. That would be considered a failed wake up. What should we request they do or not to do next? Again, CPAP can happen with a mask or it can happen with a tracheostomy or it can happen with a breathing tube through the mouth. So again, this is, they tried to take her off sedation the very next day and she got highly agitated. Sure. Yeah, that happens. Happens often in intensive care that people are taken off sedation and then they get agitated. Nothing new there.
Again, Mia, you say, “In America and trying to advocate for my mom who was recently given a tracheostomy and a PEG (PERCUTANEOUS ENDOSCOPIC GASTROSTOMY) a couple of days ago, and it feels like I have to pull teeth and nails to complete vital updates.” Yes, yes. You are probably feeling like you’re pulling teeth, but I also argue with all due respect, you’re not asking the right questions. You’re not asking the right questions and you’re not approaching it maybe not in a forceful enough way. You have to exert yourself. And I can tell you, once they know they’re talking to someone that has as much clinical insight as they have, the dynamics will change in your favor. The dynamics will change in your favor once you have someone on your side that can hold them accountable.
The other thing is this Mia. When you ask a question, a clinical question, you also need to have the next question lined up. So when I ask clinical questions and they give me an answer, I have the next question lined up. And that’s often the missing link for families in intensive care. The missing link is often, yes they ask the question, but what do they do with that information? How do they interpret it? What’s the follow-on question from there? That’s probably the missing link there.
So it’s very challenging. Don’t get me wrong. It’s an incredibly challenging situation to be in and nobody sits at home and thinks, “Oh, what should I be doing if my mom goes into ICU next week?” Nobody’s sitting at home and thinking, “Oh, what should I be doing if my dad goes into ICU next week?” Nobody’s sitting at home doing that. It only hits you when it happens, but then it’s literally like stuff hitting the fan. Yes, Cristen, my condolences to you as well. Yeah.
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As you all know, it is a very challenging environment to be in and all you can do is start with the smallest step by doing your research. Start with the smallest step by starting to ask questions and being aware of the environment that you’ve entered.
I am conscious of the time. Before I’m going to wrap this up, are there any other questions before I’m going to wrap this up? I want to thank you in advance for coming on to this live stream. I’m going to do another one next Saturday night, 7:00 PM Eastern Standard Time, which is 11:00 AM Sidney and Melbourne time on the Sunday. I will send out a topic later in the week. And if you like this video, please give it a thumbs up. If you haven’t subscribed to my YouTube channel for updates for families in intensive care and for live streams, please do so. And if there are no other questions, you can always ask other questions after this live stream below this video. And I will get back to you in the chat pad below this video with a message there. Thanks again for joining me. I’m going to wrap this up now.
Helene, you’re saying, “What about when they lie to you?” Again, that’s where the clinical expertise comes in. Well, again, if you have a clinician on your side, you have two options there. The clinician will probably find out if they lied to you and also comparing to what’s in the medical records. We advise families now, not only to get us involved, but also to have access to the medical records straight away, straight away access to medical records so that they can’t lie to you.
Mia, “I really appreciate your channel. I’m doing all the research and you’ve confirmed we are on the right path advocating for my mom.” Pleasure, Mia. I’m very happy to help. Keep watching my videos and read the blog and hopefully it’ll work out with your mom.
I’ve got to wrap this up.
Go and check out intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website and subscribe to my YouTube channel or send us an email to [email protected]. I’ll see you next week in one of my videos, and next week on the live stream again.
Take care for now and thanks again for your support. Take care.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com and I will talk to you in a few days.
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 you 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 YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED episode and I’ll see you again in another update next week!
Make sure you also check out our “blog” section for more tips and strategies or send me an email to [email protected] with your questions!
Also, have a look at our membership site INTENSIVECARESUPPORT.ORG for families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care here.
Or you can call us! Find phone numbers on our contact tab.
Also check out our Ebook section where you get more Ebooks, Videos and Audio recordings and where you can also get 1:1 counselling/consulting with me via Skype, over the phone or via email by clicking on the products tab!
This is Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM and I’ll see you again next week with another update!
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