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Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. And where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units whilst providing quality services for long-term, ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies. And otherwise medically complex patients at home including Home TPN, which is Total Parental Nutrition, Home BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), Home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure) and also for adults and children that are at home with a tracheostomy but are not ventilated.

Now, in today’s video blog, I want to quickly talk about the phone call that I had the other day, which again highlights the dilemma for many families that are in intensive care and that could benefit from our service, Intensive Care at Home. So let me give you the scenario.

So I had a lady called me the other day saying, a 22-year-old son with cerebral palsy has been admitted to intensive care and he has been there for about five days or six days. He had been intubated in an induced coma and he wasn’t waking up. The reason he ended up in ICU was with the pneumonia, and I’ll explain more about that in a minute.

But the bottom line was this, that he ended up in ICU, induced coma, intubated, and he wasn’t waking up and she was extremely worried that he wasn’t waking up. And what would happen next if he wasn’t waking up?

Now then, my next comment to that was, I would need to know, what medications he’s on? What sedation he’s on? What sedatives? What opiates is he on? How many opiates has he had? How many sedatives has he had? And has there been any more brain damage because of seizures? Because of cerebral palsy? We would need to look at medical records and so forth.

However, here is the crux of the matter, with Intensive Care at Home, we have a number of cerebral palsy clients in the community that we look after with 24-hour nursing care. And I can confidently say that our clients do not go back to ICU.

So one of the questions that I had for this lady was, does her son have nursing care at home with the NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme)? And she says, no, he doesn’t. And I said, what’s the setup? And she said, well, he’s got support workers, and that’s for a client who ends up in ICU shouldn’t have support workers at home, he needs intensive care nurses just like how other cerebral palsy clients do. Because, we can keep them, our clients at home predictably. And our clients with the reports at home are on BIPAP, they’re on CPAP. They are having a tracheostomy. Sometimes they are ventilated and they never go back to ICU because we have the skill and know how to keep them at home predictably.

Now, it didn’t sound to me like this lady had a good working knowledge of the NDIS and the possibilities.

And when I asked her, does she have an NDIS Support Coordinator, she didn’t really have an answer. It sounds to me like she was missing a lot of important steps before her son was going into ICU. For example, what someone could do who listens to this or watches this and think, ok, I’m in a similar situation, what should I do? How do I get nursing care for my child, for my child with cerebral palsy.

The first thing you need is a good NDIS Support Coordinator and we offer NDIS Support Coordination as well here at the Intensive Care at Home. You can find more information on our NDIS section on our website at intensivecarehome.com with a good NDIS Support Coordinator and all the supporting evidence, of course, for nursing care, you get nursing care through the NDIS. 24-hour nursing care, I should say and then we can keep your child, your sibling, whoever it is at home, predictably, like, just like we’re doing with many other cerebral palsy clients where there’s 24-hour NDIS nursing care funding.

So that is my tip for today and my suggestion what to do if you are in a similar situation, other things that we’ve seen just coming back to this lady’s situation. God forbid, if her son doesn’t wake up, he might need a tracheostomy. But even so then again, you could come to us, we provide tracheostomy care at home with specialized intensive care nurses. Tracheostomy care is a specialized nursing skill for intensive care nurses.

It’s not for support workers.

If support workers look after tracheostomies in the community, patients have died and continue to die if it continues. And we have the evidence for that. If a tracheostomy patient is in a hospital, he’s not looked after he or she is not looked after by a support worker, they looked after by intensive care nurses. But why should that be any different in the community?

So, I hope that helps and gives you some insights how cerebral palsy can be managed at home without any hospital readmissions, full stop. We are proving this over and over again with our clients, with our cerebral palsy clients and we can do the same for you including the NDIS support coordination. Now, our team of NDIS support coordinators are very experienced with getting all the evidence for 24-hour NDIS funded nursing care.

And I should also say before I continue, sorry to go into more detail here, with cerebral palsy clients, they often need deep suctioning, they often need nasopharyngeal airways at home. So, again, that’s a skill of an intensive care nurse, deep suctioning, you can do a lot of damage if you’re suctioning through the nose with the nasopharyngeal airway, if you don’t know what you’re doing, but it’s not even the skill of a general registered nurse.

So I hope that gives you some insights.

Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation or you have a family member at home with cerebral palsy or other complex neurological conditions. If your love one is ventilated, tracheostomy, BiPAP, CPAP ventilated, complex seizure management, and you’re either at home or in the hospital, please contact us for the right level of support. We can keep your family member at home predictably. We can get your loved one home from hospital and keep them home predictably. That’s our area of expertise. And again, if you’re at home already with insufficient support, please contact us as well.

And, if you are an NDIS Support Coordinator, watching this and you’re worried about your, participant not getting the right level of support, and you’re not sure about how to go about nursing funding from the NDIS or from any other funding bodies, please contact us as well.

And if you are a critical care nurse working in intensive care or in ED, and you’re looking for a career change, please contact us. We currently have jobs in Sydney, Melbourne and Brisbane. And if you are working in an ICU and you know of some ICU patients that could benefit from Intensive Care at Home where you have bed blocks or exit blocks, please contact us as well.

If you’re an ICU medical consultant, or an ICU consultant, we are also currently expanding our clinical team, our medical team, please contact us if you are interested in working with us. And again, if you’re working in an ICU and you have bed blocks or exit blocks, please contact us as well.

Now, here in the Intensive Care at Home, we are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), TAC (Transport Accident Commission), iCare, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved community nursing service provider. We also have received funding through departments of health and through public hospitals. Please contact us if you need help with any of that.

Thank you so much for watching. We also provide NDIS nursing assessments.

And thank you for watching. If you like my video, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Share the video with your friends and families. Click the notification button, click the like button, 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 intensivecareathome.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.

Take care for now.