Hi, it's Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM , where we instantly improve the lives of Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care, so that you can 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 last week's BLOG I've shown you "Five things NOBODY HAS EVER TOLD YOU about Intensive Care"

You can check out last week's BLOG here!

In this week's BLOG I want to show you 

How to be AWARE and PRESENT in Family meetings with the Intensive Care team

If your loved one has been admitted to Intensive Care for critical illness, chances are that you feel overwhelmed, stressed, frustrated, vulnerable, out of your comfort zone and you are in fear.

That's normal and something almost all Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care experience. It's nothing to be ashamed of.

Furthermore, at one point or another, the Intensive Care team might ask you and your Family for a formal Family meeting.

Generally speaking, the Intensive Care team is ONLY having formal meetings with a Family if the situation of their critically ill loved one is really bad!

Most of the time the Intensive Care team is asking for a or even multiple Family meetings if your critically ill loved one is

• very unstable and in a very critical condition
• in a life threatening situation
• in Intensive Care for long-term treatments and long-term stays
• having a severe(traumatic) head or brain injury
• THREATENED with an "NFR"(Not for resuscitation) or "DNR"(Do not resuscitate) order
• approaching their end of life in Intensive Care

That also means that if your critically ill loved one is tracking well and is in Intensive Care for a short term stay, there is usually no need for a formal Family meeting.

If things are going well, the Intensive Care team is just informally updating you and your Family at the bedside that things are going well and that's about it. You can see for yourself that your loved one is doing well and that they will be out of ICU soon.

And what about those really critical and dire situations that I mentioned before where your critically ill loved one is in one of those challenging, difficult and heartbreaking situations where you don't know what the next day or even the next hours have in stall?

What about those situations where you and your Family might get told that your critically ill loved one is in a life threatening situation, is very unstable, is approaching their end of life and/or will be in Intensive Care for a long time to come?

During those situations it's most likely that the Intensive Care team will ask you for a formal Family meeting! 

Family meetings in Intensive Care are not for the faint-hearted

Now, I can tell you from experience that Family meetings in Intensive Care with the Intensive Care team tend to be nothing for the faint-hearted.

I can tell you that after more than 15 years Intensive Care nursing in three different countries and after I have worked with literally thousands of critically ill Patients and their Families and after I have been in hundreds of Family meetings in Intensive Care, you and your Family will have a hard time to have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence if you are not AWARE and PRESENT during those Family meetings!

 The Intensive Care team has scripted the plot and the agenda of Family meetings well in advance

Know this:

Whenever the Intensive Care team wants to have a FORMAL MEETING with you and your Family, it's only ever happening to deliver you the BAD NEWS!

As I mentioned before, the good news can be delivered casually at the bed side and by now you will have a feeling how things are tracking anyway.

Therefore, whenever the Intensive Care team is scheduling a FORMAL MEETING with you and your Family, they have scripted the plot and the agenda of the meeting well in advance of you and your Family even knowing that a meeting is about to come.

What does that mean for you, for your Family and for your critically ill loved one?

For you and for your Family, it means that you need to be on HIGH ALERT, it means that if you are unprepared, if you don't know how to position yourself strongly before, during and after this meeting that you will literally have a very hard time to have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence!

It literally means that if you are not AWARE and PRESENT during Family meetings that the Intensive Care  team will literally drive their mainly hidden agenda and their interests without you and your Family even noticing!

Remember, Family meetings in Intensive Care are only held if your critically ill loved one is

• very unstable and in a very critical condition
• in a life threatening situation
• in Intensive Care for long-term treatments and long-term stays
• having a severe(traumatic) head or brain injury
• THREATENED with an "NFR"(Not for resuscitation) or "DNR"(Do not resuscitate) order
• approaching their end of life in Intensive Care

Therefore, in order to deliver bad news, the Intensive Care team is very shrewd and adept in delivering the bad news.

They are used to doing it and they have done it over and over again.

 You and your Family need to understand the DYNAMICS and the PSYCHOLOGY during Family meetings

If you and your Family don't understand the dynamics and the psychology during those meetings, if you don't understand what's happening BEHIND THE SCENES in Intensive Care, if you can't control your emotions during those meetings, if you are unprepared, if you don't have a "GAME PLAN"so to speak, it'll be easy for the Intensive Care team to push their mainly hidden agenda and you will wind up without PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence!

Listen, after more than 15 years Intensive Care nursing in three different countries and after I have worked with literally thousands of critically ill Patients and their Families and after I have been in hundreds of Family meetings with Families and the Intensive Care team, you need to work out your positioning before going into a Family meeting!

99% of Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care don't have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence because they are not positioned well, they trust the Intensive Car team blindly, they don't question, they don't understand that the positioning of the Intensive Care team is derived from the politics, the power play, the dynamics, the intrigue, the psychology, the competing interests and the hidden agendas in Intensive Care!

Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care also don't understand that if  their critically ill loved one is in one of those difficult, challenging and heartbreaking situations where they are

• very unstable and in a very critical condition
• in a life threatening situation
• in Intensive Care for long-term treatments and long-term stays
• having a severe(traumatic) head or brain injury
• THREATENED with an "NFR"(Not for resuscitation) or "DNR"(Do not resuscitate) order
• approaching their end of life in Intensive Care

that the positioning of your critically ill loved one's diagnosis and prognosis in those situations by the Intensive Care team is dependent on the interests and the agenda of the Intensive Care team.

I'll give you a real world example

For example, your 75 year old mother has been admitted to Intensive Care after she had a cardiac arrest and your mother needed to be resuscitated for about 20 minutes before she got admitted to Intensive Care.

The Intensive Care team is telling you and your Family that your mother has a poor chance of survival and that if she does survive that she would have a "poor quality of life" anyway and that it would be in your mother's "best interest" to "withdraw treatment".

What you and your Family don't know is that the Intensive Care Unit is currently experiencing a high demand on their expensive and scarce ICU beds, what the Intensive Care team also isn't telling you is that if they offered your mother full and best treatment available, they think that it would be too costly or that it would be too uncertain that they could meet their revenue targets or even worse, your mother doesn't fall into a medical research category and therefore the Intensive Care team hasn't got any interest in offering your mother full and best treatment available.

Related Article:

How MEDICAL RESEARCH DOMINATES your critically ill loved one's diagnosis and prognosis, as well as the CARE and TREATMENT your loved one IS RECEIVING or NOT RECEIVING!

Therefore, if you and your Family don't do your own research, if you and your Family don't know how to position yourself strongly and correctly, and if you and your Family don't know that you are involved in a HIGH STAKES GAME that generally speaking only the Intensive Care team knows how to win, you and your Family will have a very hard time to have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence!

If you and your Family are going into a Family meeting BLINDLY, if you and your Family continue to do what 99% of Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care do who have no PEACE OF MIND, no control, no power and no influence, if you and your Family don't get a handle on things QUICKLY, I can assure you that the Intensive Care team will press their agenda forward and their agenda may not be in the best interest for your critically ill loved one!

The Intensive Care team will always drive their mainly hidden agenda and if you continue to go into Family meetings BLINDLY, if you are not AWARE and PRESENT during those Family meetings and if you don't learn QUICKLY how you can have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence those Family meetings will end up being a disaster for you, for your Family and most of all for your critically ill loved one!

You, your Family and your critically ill loved one are in a unique and ONCE IN A LIFETIME situation. Unique and ONCE IN A LIFETIME situations require unique responses and if you continue to do what 99% of Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care are doing who have no PEACE OF MIND, no power, no control and no influence, you'll wind up clueless and you'll wind up with no bargaining or positioning power in a Family meeting with the Intensive Care team!

On the other hand, if you continue doing your own research, if you learn how to position yourself powerfully and if you learn the secrets "BEHIND THE SCENES" in Intensive Care, you will have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence!

Also, check out our "YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED" section

where I answer all of YOUR questions

http://intensivecarehotline.com/category/questions/

Hi, it's Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM  , where we INSTANTLY improve the lives of Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care, so that you can 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 one of our readers and the question last week was

 "My Mum has been in ICU for three weeks now and she is on ECMO for ARDS! Will she survive?"(PART 4)

 You can check out last week's question here.

 Last week's question was another part of a series of questions our reader Ellie had. You can check out previous questions of this reader here (PART1), (PART2) and (PART3)

 "My Mum has been in ICU for three weeks now and she is on ECMO for ARDS! Will she survive?"(PART 1), (PART 2) and (PART 3)

 Ellie has also been featured in our PODCAST in an interview that you can check out here.

In this week's episode of "YOUR QUESTIONS ANSWERED"

I want to answer a question that we get quite frequently from our readers that I think really needs addressing here. The question this week is

CAN YOU GO HOME ON A VENTILATOR?

After having worked with literally thousands of critically ill Patients and their Families in Intensive Care in more than 15 years Intensive Care nursing in three different countries, I have come across numerous challenges that Families of critically ill Patients face in Intensive Care.

One of those challenges Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care experience is that when their loved one is critically ill and requires mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy and therefore requires mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy for longer than expected that's when Families realize that they have a big problem and a massive dilemma.

There is no Quality of life in Intensive Care

Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care who require ongoing mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy quickly realize that there is often no easy way out of this situation, they quickly realize that their loved one is stuck in Intensive Care on a ventilator with literally no or very little Quality of life.

 Families of critically ill Patients who require ongoing mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy quickly realize that their loved one has no privacy, no dignity, no control and is heavily dependent on other people.

Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care who require mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy also quickly realize that the Intensive Care team doesn't really have a recipe either on how to improve your critically ill loved one's situation and therefore their Quality of life in Intensive Care!

Intensive Care is not the right environment for your loved one stuck on a ventilator!

 The fact of the matter is that Intensive Care is just not the right environment for your loved one who requires ongoing mechanical ventilation with Tracheostomy!

You and your critically ill loved one have very little or no say what your day looks like in Intensive Care, although the only thing generally speaking that keeps your loved one in Intensive Care is the ventilator dependency with Tracheostomy.

You, your Family and your critically ill loved one quickly realize that the Intensive Care team is calling the shots, is driving the bus so to speak and you quickly realize that you have no PEACE OF MIND, no control, no power and no influence!

You might have also realized that after your critically ill loved one may have gone through multiple failed weaning attempts off the ventilator that your loved one gets depressed, apathetic and is losing the will to live as the Intensive Care environment is just not the right environment!

 You and your Family are spending far too much time in Intensive Care!

You would have also realized by now that you and your Family are spending far too much time in ICU and you and your Family have realized that you are putting your life on hold, whilst your loved one stays ventilated in Intensive Care!

Therefore, many Families of critically ill Patients and the Patients themselves if they are awake and conscious when faced with this massive challenge in Intensive Care ask the question

"CAN YOU GO HOME ON A VENTILATOR?"

 That's a fantastic question to ask and in short the answer is YES.

However, it depends on where you live and it depends on service availability.

For example if you are living in Australia check out INTENSIVECAREATHOME.COM.AU and if you are living in European countries such as Germany, Austria and Switzerland there are plenty of specialized Intensive Home Care nursing services for long-term mechanically ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy and they provide specialized Intensive Home Care services that provide your critically ill loved one with a much improved QUALITY OF LIFE and in some instances with a much improved Quality of end of life.

Those specialized Intensive Home Care services also provide Families of critically ill Patients with a MUCH improved QUALITY OF LIFE, because you and your Family can stop spending day and night in Intensive Care!

Intensive Home Care as a genuine alternative to a long-term stay in Intensive Care!

Those specialized Intensive Home Care services- besides providing a genuine alternative to a long-term stay in Intensive Care for Patients and their Families- also provide Intensive Care Units with a much needed and much more efficient service compared to an expensive, inefficient and burdensome long-term stay in Intensive Care.

In essence, Intensive Home Care services such as INTENSIVECAREATHOME.COM.AU provide a win-win situation and they create real value by

• taking long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy out of Intensive Care and provide care for them at home on a 24/7 basis if needed and have critical care trained nurses looking after them

• improving the QUALITY OF LIFE for long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy

• improve the QUALITY OF LIFE for Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care as they can stop spending day and night in Intensive Care

• in some instances improve the Quality of end of life long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy

• free up expensive, precious and scarce Intensive Care beds that can be used for other more acutely unwell Patients in Intensive Care

• give back control to Patients and their Families in their own environment where they can structure their day according to their needs and not according to the Intensive Care team's needs

• Focus on opportunities and possibilities for long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy, for example, taking ventilated children back to school and/or focus on employment and education opportunities by having the right level of support and the right mindset in place

• Focus on spending quality time with their Families in their own environment

• Focus on spending time on activities such as going out, getting some fresh air and focusing on the Patients' strengths and not their weaknesses

• Boosting the morale, the energy, the self worth, the self- esteem and the confidence of long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy by taking them out of a depressing, limiting and inhibiting Intensive Care environment into their own home

• Creating a more cost effective and viable alternative for Hospitals, Health insurances and health funding agencies to provide an extension to their existing Intensive Care services

Again, check out INTENSIVECAREATHOME.COM.AU for more information

Being TRAPPED in Intensive Care on a ventilator is not fun!

Now, I can also share that I have personally worked with long-term ventilated Adults& Children with Tracheostomy in their own home as a genuine alternative to a long-term stay in Intensive Care and to me it's a "no-brainer" and it's the right thing and the only thing to do if someone is TRAPPED in Intensive Care on a ventilator!

The level of PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence you, your Family and your critically ill loved one will experience at home is just so much improved, not even mentioning your and your loved one's Quality of life!

In short, going home on a ventilator is not only the right thing to do, it's the only thing to do.



If you want your questions answered just hit reply to this email or email me at support@intensivecarehotline.com and I'll answer your questions!

FREE Video Mini- Course out now!

If you are interested in more FREE education and information if your loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care, I have created a FREE mini- course 

A BLUEPRINT for PEACE OF MIND, CONTROL, POWER& INFLUENCE whilst your loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care! 

The FREE Video Mini- course consists of 4 short videos that will educate you quickly and succinctly how you can have PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence whilst your loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care.

You can sign up and get your first FREE Video here

http://intensivecarehotline.com/free-mini-course/

Also, our cutting edge new information PRODUCT will be released soon! We are NOW finalizing our first cutting edge information PRODUCT that will help Families of critically ill Patients MASTER, take control, have power and influence in all of the most challenging situations in Intensive Care, even if their loved one is dying!

 The information product will be an "IN-DEPTH" education product for Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care and a SHORTCUT for Families to have PEACE OF MIND, control, power& influence! The focus of the education product will be on PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence during the following situations in Intensive Care

• long-term stays in Intensive Care 
• end- of- life situations
• Family meetings with the Intensive Care team
• withdrawal of treatment situations and/or perceived medical futility
• what to do if your critically ill loved one is THREATENED with an "NFR"(Not for resuscitation) or "DNR"(Do not resuscitate) order
  
• severe head and brain injuries

The information product will be made available in Ebook, Video and Audio format so that our Customers can consume the information product in their chosen medium! 

Keep your eyes on news and updates for our cutting edge new information PRODUCT!

The Ebooks, Videos and Audios will be a solution to the biggest and most challenging areas in Intensive Care for Families of critically ill Patients! 

Our cutting edge new information PRODUCT is a shortcut to PEACE OF MIND, control, power and influence for Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care!

If you have any questions about our upcoming products or if you have any suggestions 

please let me know at support@intensivecarehotline.com

Your Friend

Patrik Hutzel

Critical Care Nurse

Founder& Editor

WWW.INTENSIVECAREHOTLINE.COM