Quick Tip for Families in Intensive Care: ICU Rushing to Put Your Loved One with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) into Hospice? Know This Before You Let It Happen!

“ICU rushing to put your loved one with ARDS (Acute Respiratory Distress Syndrome) into hospice? Know this before you let it happen!”

Hi! It’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecarehotline.com, where we help families of critically ill patients in intensive care to make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence fast, so that your loved one gets best care and treatment always.

In today’s video, I want to talk about a very common situation that families in intensive care come to us with every day.

So, if your loved one is in ICU with ARDS, also known as acute respiratory distress syndrome, also known as lung failure, they are critically ill on a ventilator with a breathing tube or a tracheostomy, and now the ICU team is telling you, “It’s time for hospice or comfort care or withdrawal of treatment.” Does that sound familiar? If you’ve come to this video, it probably does sound familiar.

Now, let me tell you, if this is happening to you, don’t let yourself be rushed into such a critical and potentially life or death situation.

Here’s what’s really going on. ARDS is a serious condition, absolutely, but people recover from ARDS all the time, when they’re given time and the right treatment. But ICU teams often don’t want to give that time, why? Because they are, number 1, under pressure for beds, ventilators, staff, other equipment, so they’re stretched with ICU nurses and ICU doctors in particular. Honestly, they often assume your loved one won’t have any perceived future quality of life without really knowing your loved one at all.

It’s not their decision to make. It is absolutely your decision, and you need to be a strong advocate for your loved one in that situation. Unfortunately, what we see over and over again is that families are being pressured into hospice care or withdrawal of treatment prematurely because basic ICU measures have been exhausted, but in reality they haven’t.

Because the biggest challenge for families in intensive care is 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.

So, if ICU says their measures have been exhausted, it’s often not true, because once again, you don’t know what you don’t know, you take things for face value. The reality is that, what you see is often not what you get in ICU. You have to dig deeper, and that’s where me and my team come in. We have decades and decades of ICU experience because we understand intensive care inside out.

Coming back to ARDS in ICU, if your loved one hasn’t had a tracheostomy, for example, a proper weaning trial, time to stabilize, or full treatment for infections and ARDS support, such as nitric oxide, sildenafil, epoprostenol, also known as Flolan, high oscillation ventilation or even ECMO (Extracorporeal Membrane Oxygenation), then it’s way too early to talk about hospice or end of life care.

That is what I call ICU fatigue. The ICU team gets tired of managing a complex patient with often complex family dynamics who isn’t improving fast enough for their liking, so they push the family to making decisions based on fear and pressure and not facts. If you belong to the 99% of families in intensive care, you do not ask questions, you do not challenge, and you don’t get advice from a professional advocate like myself, that’s a big mistake. People have died because of it.

We have saved many lives in situations like that. You can verify that on our testimonial section at intensivecarehotline.com, and you can verify that on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section where we have done client interviews.

So, in a nutshell, don’t fall for ICU team traps. If the ICU is pushing hospice, you’ll need to push back and you need to ask yourself, where’s the urgency and where’s the rush to kill your family member? That’s a very valid question you need to ask.

Let me repeat that. Ask the ICU team, where’s the urgency or the rush to kill your family member? You need to ask the right questions and get expert help, so you’re not making a decision that you will regret for the rest of your life.

That’s exactly what we do here at intensivecarehotline.com. We help families, like yours, all over the world to advocate for your loved one who’s critically ill in intensive care. We challenge ICU teams and hold them accountable, and we make sure you’ve explored every option before you’re even considering giving up. We leave no stone unturned.

Lastly, as a bonus, did you know that 70 to 90% of ICU patients survive? That’s documented in many research papers within the ICU community. So, there’s many much information the intensive care team is deliberately withholding from you to push their agenda and their agenda only. Your agenda is to save your loved one’s life, and you can push that all day every day.

Like I said, to wrap this up, ask yourself, where’s the rush and where’s the urgency to kill your loved one? Shouldn’t there be a rush and an urgency to save your loved one’s life with all options that are available to them? Make sure they’re doing everything that they can to save your loved one’s life with ARDS.

I have worked in critical care nursing for 25 years in three different countries where I worked as a nurse manager for over 5 years in intensive care. I’ve been consulting and advocating for families in intensive care since 2013 here at intensivecarehotline.com. I can very confidently say that we have saved many lives with our consulting and advocacy because of our insights. You can verify that on our testimonial section at intensivecarehotline.com. You can verify it on our intensivecarehotline.com podcast section where we have done client interviews because our advice is absolutely life changing.

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 why we help you to improve your life instantly, making sure you make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power, and influence, making sure your loved one gets best care and treatment always. That’s why you can join a growing number of members and clients that we have helped over the years, saving their loved ones’ lives.

That’s why I do one on one consulting and advocacy over the phone, Zoom, WhatsApp, whichever medium works best for you. I talk to you and your families directly. I handhold you through this once in a lifetime situation that you simply cannot afford to get wrong. When I talk to families directly, I also talk to doctors and nurses directly, asking all the questions that you haven’t even considered asking but must be asked when you have a loved one critically ill in intensive care.

I also represent you in family meetings with intensive care teams.

We also do medical record reviews in real time so that you can get a second opinion in real time. We also do medical record reviews after intensive care if in case you have unanswered questions, if you need closure, or if you are suspecting medical negligence.

We also have a membership for families of critically ill patients in intensive care, and you can become a member if you go to intensivecarehotline.com, if you click on the membership link, or if you go to intensivecaresupport.org directly. In the membership, you have access to me and my team, 24 hours a day, in the membership area and via email, and we answer all questions intensive care related. In the membership, you also have exclusive access to 21 eBooks and 21 videos that I have personally written and recorded. All of that will help you to improve your life instantly, make informed decisions, have peace of mind, control, power and influence, making sure your loved one gets best care and treatment always.

All of that you get at intensivecarehotline.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.

If you like my videos, 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, what questions and insights you have from this video.

I also do a weekly YouTube live where I answer your questions live on the show. You will get notification for the YouTube live if you are a subscriber to my YouTube channel or my intensivecarehotline.com email newsletter at intensivecarehotline.com.

Thank you so much for watching.

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

Take care for now.

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