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Hi it’s Patrik Hutzel from INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME where we provide tailor made solutions for long-term ventilated Adults & 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 patients and medically complex patients at home, including home TPN.
In last week’s blog, I talked about,
TAKING MY SISTER HOME TO TAKE CARE OF HER. SHE’S LIVING ON VENT & THEY DECLARE PARTIAL BRAIN INJURY
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients.
Can I Have ICU Nurses at Home for My Ventilated Son Instead of Support Worker?
Good morning, good afternoon, wherever you are. Welcome to another Intensive Care at Home livestream. Just waiting for another second until the people have come in.
Okay. Good morning, good afternoon, good evening, wherever you are. Welcome to another Intensive Care at Home livestream. My name is Patrik Hutzel, founder and director of Intensive Care at Home.
Today’s topic is: Can I have ICU nurses at home for my ventilated son with tracheostomy instead of support workers? And we’ll dive really deep into today’s topic. Before we do that, I want to welcome all of our viewers. Also want to welcome the viewers that are watching this on replay if they can’t attend the livestream. If you have any questions today, please type them into the chat pad. I will also give you the option to dial into the show if we have enough time, depending on how many questions come in.
Before we go into today’s topic, you might wonder what makes me qualified to talk about today’s topic. I’m a critical care nurse by background. I have worked in intensive care/critical care for over 20 years in three different countries. I have also worked as a nurse unit manager in intensive care for over five years. I am the founder and director of Intensive Care at Home, where we provide Intensive Care at Home services for predominantly long-term ventilated adults and children with tracheostomies, but also for clients on BIPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure)/, (continuous positive airway pressure) ventilation, which is also known as non-invasive ventilation. We provide home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), and home infusion services and basically, we’re replicating an intensive care but in the community.
Currently, we are working or we are operating all around Australia in all the major capital cities, including rural and regional areas. We are also in the process of branching out into the United States. If you’re watching this from the United States, you should contact us as well at intensivecareathome.com and we can help you take the next steps if you’re looking for Intensive Care at Home services.
With Intensive Care at Home in Australia, we are currently employing hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience in the community. We bring skills into the community that no other service provider can match in Australia. We are the only service provider in Australia that has third party accreditation and NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) accreditation for Intensive Care at Home. We have built very unique intellectual property in this space again that I believe no other service provider can match.
Now, as I said, if you have any questions in relation to today’s topic, please type them into the chat pad.
Now, who’s this video for today? This video obviously is for anyone who has a loved one in intensive care on a ventilator long term, especially with the tracheostomy, but also if you have a loved one in intensive care, long-term potentially on BiPAP, CPAP ventilation, not necessarily a tracheostomy. The video is for anyone who is at home already on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, but is feeling unsafe because they might have support workers instead of intensive care nurses. And I will break this down today and I will dive really deep into that.
The video is also for patients, families, but they’re also for intensive care nurses, intensive care doctors, but they’re also for NDIS support coordinators or NDIS specialist support coordinators in Australia that work with the NDIS and that have clients or NDIS participants that are potentially ventilated, have a tracheostomy, and they have found that the NDIS are knocking back an application for registered nurses/intensive care nurses. So that’s what this video is all about today and let’s dive really deep into that.
What I want to focus on today is really what is best practice in the community? What is best practice to help patients and families to go home from intensive care when everyone says, “Well, that’s not possible.” Well, it is possible.
A little bit more about my background. I have first started working in intensive care in the late 1990s in Germany. And then after I had worked in intensive care for a couple of years, I became part of one of the first or the first nursing service in Germany where we were pioneering Intensive Care at Home and we were pioneering this very, very successfully and we really created an industry that is highly successful in Germany and other countries in Europe in particular. But then when I first brought the concept to Australia, it’s also been wildly successful here in Australia and we’ve been providing Intensive Care at Home services since 2014 with clients… 2013 actually with clients. We are in our 10th year of operation in Australia.
And what is best practice? Before I go into the best practice, I’m constantly shocked when I hear that the NDIS is only “allowing” to have support workers look after what are basically intensive care patients and they let them do that at home without any backup. Now we do it at home with hundreds of years of intensive care nursing experience on our books, having that wide and deep variety of skills on our books and making it safe in that sense. So having support workers do work that intensive care nurses are doing, it’s pretty much flying blind. It’s pretty much like letting the cabin crew fly the airplane instead of the pilot. We know what that looks like and very, very sadly, we know of at least four or five cases where support workers looked after ventilated or tracheostomy adults and kids in the community and they died because support workers could not manage medical emergencies that inevitably come with a territory of ventilation and tracheostomy.
For example, we had three clients that we looked after in the community where the NDIS was only funding night shifts. And we told the NDIS and we told the families that the minute we are leaving here that those lives are hanging at a thread. We were suggesting on multiple locations that we would just call an ambulance by the time we are leaving so that the clients can go to hospital instead of not having an intensive care nurse at home. But whether it was the NDIS or the families themselves, they wouldn’t believe us. And then unfortunately they were watching with their very eyes, their loved ones dying at home because the support workers or the families themselves couldn’t manage the medical emergency. That emergencies that once again come with inevitably with the territory when it comes to ventilation and tracheostomy.
So, this is very sad and if anything, this video today is also a homage to our clients that have passed away where we knew the writing was on the wall and where we highlighted to the stakeholders that if you’re not funding intensive care nurses that this is bound to happen. And we are in front of the NDIS because they still need to investigate those deaths. They are still busy trying to sweep it under the carpet. Bill Shorten office and his ministers and ministerial advisors are dealing with it at the moment, and this can’t happen again. But even prior to the NDIS funding bodies like the Department of Health, we’re also thinking that some long-term ventilated adults or kids could go into the community whether it’s invasive ventilation, tracheostomy or non-invasive ventilation, BiPAP, CPAP, and they could survive and they simply couldn’t or they could survive. They had lots of ICU readmissions, defeating the purpose of trying to empty the ICU bed in the first place.
Now, I know that we at Intensive Care at Home can cut the cost of an intensive care bed by around 50%. ICU bed costs between 5 to $6,000 per bed per day, but the cost of an ICU bed can’t be cut by 70% or even 80% and have support workers deliver a service that not even a general registered nurse can deliver.
For example, one of the clients that passed away that I was referring to was looked after by a general registered nurse during the day, and even a general registered nurse that hasn’t worked in ICU or in ED or in ER is able to look after tracheostomy or ventilator at home.
So, really today is about what is best practice, how do we deliver it, and what is our promise and benefit to the NDIS, to the clients, or to any other funding body as well. And what’s the benefit to an intensive care unit in particular? Let’s maybe just start with that very quickly. We are basically freeing up the bed in the most sought after area in a hospital, which is intensive care, the most sought after bed in intensive care. So that’s one promise, of course, but the next promise of course is if you have a loved one at home, adult or a child, with a tracheostomy or in a ventilator, what is best practice? And clearly best practice is to have intensive care nurses do the work because it’s evidence-based. Once again, you would not have an intensive care patient go to a hospital floor or hospital ward and have them looked after by ward nurses, by general RNs if they have a ventilator or a tracheostomy or potentially have both.
So let’s be clear and let’s be evidence based here. Anyone on invasive ventilation, whether it’s a breathing tube, tracheostomy, needs an intensive care nurse 24-hours a day, whether that’s in intensive care or at home. That’s number one.
Anyone with a tracheostomy that’s not ventilated needs an intensive care nurse 24-hours a day, whether that’s in hospital or at home. And number three, anyone that is on non-invasive ventilation such as BiPAP, CPAP in ICU or on a ward needs an intensive care nurse 24-hours a day. And those intensive care/critical care nurses need to have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience. Ideally, they need to have postgraduate qualifications in critical care and over 50% of our staff have postgraduate qualifications in critical care.
Moreover, we are providing services according to the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines. Now if you do have a look at our website at intensivecareathome.com, there’s a section, the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines, and these guidelines clearly demand, not suggest, clearly demand as per evidenced base that once again the service outside of intensive care can only be provided by critical care nurses with a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience. And this evidence is a result of Intensive Care at Home services in Germany for the last 25 years.
So there couldn’t be a greater authority than having those guidelines set by the association for pulmonary doctors in Germany, including intensive care nurses that have worked with Intensive Care at Home in Germany and obviously also with input from patients and families.
Once again, if you’re not delivering this service according to best practice guidelines, people have died and unfortunately will continue to die or have more ICU readmissions and their life expectancy is probably going to be diminished if best practice standards are not being met.
Also, just coming back quickly to what is currently happening in Germany, funnily enough just in the last week or so, the lawmakers in Germany have confirmed that the best practice guidelines, which we published on our website, the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines are still current and that intensive care at home nursing services need to be provided around those guidelines and best evidence and best practice guidelines. Again, all staff need to have a minimum of two years critical care nursing experience, ideally with a postgraduate qualification. And once again, this is what’s happening in intensive care. The only way that a patient can safely leave intensive care and have that bed replicated in the community is with the best practice community guidelines for Home Mechanical Ventilation.
But more importantly, like I briefly mentioned in the beginning, we are, as far as I’m aware, in 2023, Intensive Care at Home is the only service provider in Australia that has achieved third party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home services, whether it’s through ISO 9001:2015 or through the NDIS. I’m not aware that any other service provider can match that level of accreditation as well as intellectual property that we have documented and also built in our service.
Now, why is a question like this coming up in the first place? Can I have ICU nurses at home for my ventilated and tracheostomy son instead of support workers? Well, the question unfortunately comes up that when people are being referred to the NDIS in particular in Australia, that NDIS support coordinator who are predominantly non-clinical people pick up the work and they don’t know what to advocate for. They just think that people like support workers with all due respect to the individuals can be picked off the street, run through an e-module, have training through an e-module on ventilation and tracheostomy that takes a registered nurse five years to learn, and they think they can run them through an e-training module online and they can do intensive care work. That’s insanity. That is insanity.
And unfortunately, the NDIS is still making such rules that are outdated, that are inappropriate, that are set up to kill people. And again, this is an appeal to Bill Shorten and his ministerial office, including his advisors, that if the NDIS continues on that trajectory that there will be a push for support workers to do intensive care nursing work, more people will die. Maybe set the goal of the NDIS to save money. I mean, it’s been in the news in the last few weeks that the NDIS cost is blowing out. Well, that may well be the case, but the reality is by using a service like ours, we are saving money on the other end. We are saving the cost. We are saving 50% of the cost of an ICU bed.
Now I am well aware that the cost of an ICU bed is usually carried by state departments of health. So I can understand that. Why should the NDIS foot the bill for state governments? I can understand that, but this is something that we need to look at from a holistic point of view. We are still saving money, whether it’s money for the federal budget or for the state budget. This is something that the state governments and the federal government needs to look at in combination. What makes sense for the individual, what makes sense for the health system that a service like Intensive Care at Home cuts the cost of the most sought after bed in a hospital by 50%? Surely that can’t be ignored.
So once again, and now we’re coming to NDIS support coordinators and NDIS specialist support coordinators hopefully watching this video. So again, I really appreciate every NDIS support coordinator or specialist support coordinator. The work they’re doing, it’s very important. But we also understand by engaging with them that most of them are not health professionals. They don’t understand the difference that I’ve just explained in detail. The difference between an intensive care nurse in the community and a support worker. Well, that’s a difference like day and night. Again, it’s a difference like the airplane being flown by the cabin crew instead of the pilot. That is the difference. How likely is that an airplane can go from A to B without an accident with a cabin crew flying the airplane or with a pilot flying the airplane?
It’s the same in our line of work. How likely is it to have a ventilated and tracheostomy client at home with a support worker or with an intensive care nurse? Well, again, the latter is evidence-based and safe, whereas support workers at home with ventilated or tracheostomy client… But also things like deep suctioning if someone needs a nasopharyngeal airway for cerebral palsy, and someone needs deep suctioning with a nasopharyngeal airway, even that is an intensive care nursing skill. It’s not even a general RN nursing skill.
So, coming back to NDIS support coordinator as an NDIS specialist support coordinators really to get the NDIS to approve plans for intensive care nurses in the home. There’s an advocacy process that we are going through with all of our clients, with all of our NDIS support coordinators to go from A to B, and I would highly encourage you to contact us to see what’s possible. I would appeal to you not to put your participants lives at risk by taking the path of least resistance and take a package for your client for support coordinator. It’s a death package. There’s no other words for it.
Just like I explained what has happened when NDIS participants on a ventilator with a tracheostomy are looked after by support workers instead of intensive care nurses. Two out of the three deaths that I was referring to earlier were actually not even ventilated clients. They were clients with a tracheostomy, they weren’t even ventilated. So, I hope that illustrates the risk that if someone is ventilated, again, whether it’s non-invasively BiPAP, CPAP, or invasively with a tracheostomy, they need intensive care nurses 24 hours a day. It’s evidence-based practice.
Now also another thing that I researched, it’s not only through my day-to-day work when we have inquiries about our service and talking to NDIS support coordinators. Again, most of the time they don’t know where to start. And again, you can contact us at intensivecareathome.com so we can help you take the next steps with your participants to get the nursing care funding. Because we have many NDIS support coordinators who don’t even know that the NDIS is funding nursing care or intensive care nurses in the home. They have no idea.
That was confirmed by us going to the NDIS exhibition as an exhibitor couple of weeks ago in Melbourne. And obviously at the exhibition there were a lot of NDIS support coordinators and specialist support coordinators at the exhibition. We had a booth there and it was highly frequented. We had a lot of inquiries and some of the NDIS support coordinators came to us and they said, “Look, we didn’t even know that the NDIS is funding nursing care, let alone a service like Intensive Care at Home.” So there are a lot of unknowns still within the NDIS where even people working within the NDIS don’t really know what is happening. What the NDIS urgently needs is more clinicians in that stakeholder environment. They need doctors, nurses who understand how the NDIS ties in with the health system and how the NDIS and NDIS funding in particular can help manage not only the quality of life for patients and for families, but also how they can manage the interface between health and disability.
Now also for anyone who thinks that what I’m talking about is nonsense or doesn’t agree or whatever you think, when we first got started in 2013, way before the NDIS was even funding nursing care, pretty much what we did at the time was we were putting submissions to the departments of health or to relevant departments of health for our clients and we got the funding. Again, the argument is that we cut the cost of an intensive care bed by 50%, but more importantly, we take your loved one or yourself home from intensive care, improving your quality of life or quality of end of life in some situations. Palliative care is part of what we do and no one can ignore that we can cut the cost of an intensive care bed by 50% and shift intensive care into the community.
Then what I would also want to focus on is that all of our clients in the community have community access. So what does that mean? That means if you have a family member in intensive care, they’re stuck in an intensive care, they might be lucky to see the daylight one day, maybe get into a room with a window or whatever, whereas our clients at home, they have daylight every day. They have community access every day. They go shopping, they go see their friends, they go to the movies, they might go to a restaurant with their family. So what a contrast compared to someone who’s in ICU stuck in a room with no natural daylight? So a lot more is possible at home than you think there is and go from there.
Now, also what I would like to focus on again with some organizations using support workers in the home for basically intensive care patients, you got to keep in mind if an RN… And I’ve seen RNs, I’ve even seen ENs, enrolled nurses train support workers on someone with a ventilator and tracheostomy. That’s the blind leading the blind. And I don’t know how any RN in their right mind can take the responsibility to train a support worker on intensive care nursing skills. That again, is madness and I don’t know where they stand from a legal point of view. I don’t believe that any insurance would take indemnity for an RN that’s training support worker on ventilation, tracheostomy on intensive care nursing skills. I do believe that if you do that, you are taking a high risk, a very high risk, both support workers and the RN that is potentially doing that.
Now, let’s expand what we do with Intensive Care at Home for another moment. And what I’m trying to expand on is with 24-hour nursing rosters in the community and replicating an intensive care, but there comes a huge amount of responsibility for our staff and for us as a provider of course. And we are now slowly moving towards team leaders, funded team leaders from the NDIS for those 24-hour nursing rosters because there’s a lot of training that needs to be put into the teams and that can only really be done by a team leader. So this is also an appeal once again to the NDIS that more team leaders need to be funded.
It’s very reasonable to fund a team leader for a 24-hour nursing roster in the home because teams need to be managed, they need to be trained, there needs to be team meetings. The quality of life and the care for our participants and client’s needs to be optimized. And we have found that if there are team leaders, those rosters tend to become more stable. The staff turnover is less. Hospital readmissions are fewer. Quality of life is better. Staff retention is much higher because there needs to be longevity on those rosters so that the clients have a regular team. Imagine if clients in a very sensitive home care environment always have different staff coming in and don’t have stable teams. That is a big challenge.
So I hope that illustrates why support workers in the community for ventilation tracheostomy are dangerous. They are very dangerous and patients have died because simply support workers do not know what they’re doing with ventilation tracheostomy. And again, an online e-module cannot give them the training that a registered nurse had to go through to become a critical care nurse. Takes at least five years. But I’m also wondering, where’s AHPRA (Australian Health Practitioner Regulation Agency) in all of this? How can AHPRA not step in here and maintain best practice guidelines? How can AHPRA allow that some organizations, including the NDIS, is allowing for some support workers to let them do intensive care work? That is unheard of.
But again, if you are a family member or if you’re a patient and you have support workers at home and you want intensive care nurses, while you need intensive care nurses, please contact us as a matter of urgency. And contact us again for NDIS support coordinators for any hospitals. Please contact us at intensivecareathome.com on one of the numbers on the top of our website.
So that wraps up today’s topic, but I still have other questions to go through, and if you have any questions, please contact us at intensivecareathome.com.
Now, also what I do on these YouTube lives, I also answer questions for Intensive Care Hotline. So some of those YouTube livestreams that I do are for Intensive Care at Home, some are for Intensive Care Hotline. As most of you know, I also run a consulting and advocacy organization, Intensive Care Hotline, where we consult and advocate for families in intensive care all over the world. So I want to go through some questions there as well. I always answer the questions that are coming through or coming in during the week. I just need to scroll to my emails and answer some questions now. And we get questions all week, whether it’s intensive care related, whether it’s intensive care at home related, we always mix it up here a little bit. Okay.
One question was from Sarah. Sarah sent us an email: “My dad was brought into intensive care on the 4th of April after having an epilepsy, seizures once in a canal boat and fell into the water. He was still seizing after they removed him from the water fairly quickly as he had no evidence of drowning in his lungs, but his heart stopped but was started again and then transported into hospital. They immediately didn’t think it was positive and told us to say our goodbyes. However, after being put into an induced coma, he became stable whilst we were there on the 4th, and then on the 5th, his vitals recovered, he contracted pneumonia. But a day or so later, his lungs looked normal apparently.
“They reduced his sedation the morning of the 5th, but he started feeding and so they felt it was best to resedate him. The following morning, they reduced sedation. However, I felt he was still feeding as he was twitching in his face. They didn’t seem to do anything about it until the following day they gave him stronger medication for it. We were told again, doom and gloom, he won’t make it as he hasn’t woken up yet. This was on the 5th as well.
“The 6th, he started yawning and having small facial expressions but nothing consistent than opening one eye, but again, nothing consistently. We get to Saturday and they said they did an EEG (Electroencephalogram) a few days before and the CT scan of the brain and were going to give results, but the EEG was clouded by the seizures. The CT showed apparently a normal brain, so they were lost to understand. We had no questions to ask. We didn’t know what to ask. Now it’s Monday and they have reviewed the images again and have said he is unlikely to have any recovery or quality of life. They said that as he has a heart attack or has anything occurring between now and when we go in tomorrow, they won’t be resuscitating him. My question is that what should we be asking? How can the same scan change? Are they allowed to just say it’s over and pull the plug? We are lost what to even ask. Many thanks for your website. I’m so glad I found it today.”
Right. Sarah, my first question here is with your dad having cardiac arrest, did they do cooling therapy to protect his brain and other major organs? That’s the first question that should be asked here. Next question is why is he having seizures? He’s probably had some downtime with no oxygen to the brain, and that means he probably had an anoxic or hypoxic brain injury. Did they start him on Keppra, phenytoin, anything like that to prevent seizures? That’s the first question. Next question is how was he sedated when he was in the induced coma? What sedatives did he have? Propofol, midazolam/Versed, morphine, fentanyl, anything else?
I’m surprised it took them five days to do an EEG and a CT scan. How can a CT scan of the brain change? Well, of course, a CT scan of the brain can change depending on what is happening there, but this would require you to communicate with the neurologist. But things like that take time. You should also talk to the cardiologist and find out what has exactly happened to the heart. How likely is it for another cardiac arrest to happen?
Now as far as your rights are concerned, can they just stop life support without your consent? No, they can’t. That is illegal. That’s number one. Can they just put a DNR (Do Not Resuscitate) on him without your consent? No. That is illegal. As far as the note is concerned that your dad won’t have any quality of life if he was to survive this situation. Once again, this is not for anyone to judge. What is quality of life? What is it? I don’t know. Is quality of life for you to have time with your dad at home? I was just talking about Intensive Care at Home. Would he benefit from Intensive Care at Home, but will he recover over time? What intensive care units are trying to do, they’re trying to empty beds as quickly as possible, and sometimes one way for them to empty beds is to stop life support and no longer treat patients and let them pass away. That’s one way to empty a bed.
In your situation, you need to keep advocating for your dad. Best way is to simply contact me at Intensive Care at Home or intensivecarehotline.com, and then I can help you with the advocacy for your dad. It would also help to talk to doctors and nurses directly and find out more information because they’re probably only telling you half of the story if that.
Now next question comes from Jenny. Jenny writes in: “Hi Patrik. I came across your YouTube channel and really need your help. My sister is in ICU, she’s 35 years of age. She was victimized and given unknown drug. Her body is in rhabdomyolysis and she’s suffering from multiple system failure. She’s on vasopressor/inotropes that seems to be causing more harm than good. She’s on continuous dialysis and in fluid overload. She has sepsis and her CK (Creatine Kinase) levels are high. Lactate is at 11.2 and AST (Aspartate Transferase), ALT (Alanine transaminase) are all high. She has been taken off sedation a couple of days ago and we are waiting on her to wake up. She’s making improvements in the lab results as well. Can you please help save my sister’s life and limbs?”
Well, with rhabdomyolysis, what it means is she needs to go on dialysis for a few days to get rid of the rhabdomyolysis, which is what I understand is already happening. That’s good. You haven’t shared how long your sister has been in ICU, but just because she’s been taken off sedation a couple of days ago, and if she hasn’t woken up, that’s nothing unusual in ICU. If anything, it’s very early days and you need to give it more time.
Now it’s concerning that she’s vasopressor/inotropes. That is definitely concerning, and that could mean she’s hemodynamically unstable. In this situation, you should be potentially talking to the ICU team, or in the ideal world, you get us to talk to the ICU team on your behalf because we can ask all the right questions. If she’s in multiple organ failure, what does that exactly mean? We know her kidneys are failing. We know her liver is failing. You mentioned that AST and ALT are high. You haven’t mentioned anything about the brain failing. You haven’t mentioned anything about the heart failing. The lungs are failing because she’s on a ventilator. She’s in an induced coma, so we know that. But will here kidneys, for example, recover once she’s gotten rid of the rhabdomyolysis? So it is very early days. Your sister’s very young. It would be good to have a look at the list of medications. It would be good to have a list of the pathology results, blood results, and that would give us a lot more information.
This is again, what I keep saying over and over again, that 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. And that’s exactly what you’re dealing with here. And if lactate is 11.2, that is indeed very, very high. But with her being on the hemofilter or dialysis machine, hopefully that’ll come down in the next few days assuming the filter keeps working and isn’t clotting. So again, I urge you to reach out to us so that we can A) talk to the doctors and nurses directly, or B) look at the medical records. I hope that helps to answer your questions. I do need to wrap this up because I’ve got to get on to a client call.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care or at home on a ventilator with the tracheostomy you should contact us at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected]. That’s not only for you as a patient or as a family in need of Intensive Care at Home services with intensive care nurses, but also if you’re an NDIS support coordinator or NDIS specialist support coordinator, please contact us. And if you don’t know what to do, that’s okay. We can help you. We have a network of great NDIS support coordinators and specialist NDIS support coordinators that we have worked with for a long time and that we have great faith in, and they can help you as well acquire the necessary skills.
And if you have a loved in intensive care and you have questions about intensive care in general, please contact us at intensivecarehotline.com. Again, call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecarehotline.com or simply send us an email to [email protected] with your questions.
Also have a look at our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. There you have access to me and my team 20 hours a day in a membership area and via email. And we answer all questions, intensive care and intensive care at home related.
If you need an NDIS nursing assessment, please contact us as well. We have a legal nurse consultant on our team and we can help you with an NDIS nursing assessment as well, as much as we can help you with medical record reviews in intensive care in real time, or after intensive care. But we highly recommend that we help you review medical records in intensive care in real time so that you can almost have that second opinion in real time. But we also offer it after intensive care.
Now, thanks for watching again.
Like the video, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. 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.
Thanks for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I will talk to you in a few days.
Take care.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service intensive care at home and if you want to find out how to get funding for our service and how it all works, please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send me an email to [email protected]. That’s Patrik, just with a K at the end.
Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies and you can look at our case studies as well at our service section.
Intensive care at home Case studies
And if you are at home already and you need support for your critically ill loved one at home, and you have insufficient support or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you with all of that.
And if you are an intensive care nurse or a pediatric intensive care nurse with a minimum of two years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience, and you ideally have a critical care certificate, please contact us as well. Check out our career section on our website. We are currently hiring ICU and pediatric ICU nurses for clients in the Melbourne metropolitan area, Northern suburbs, Sunbury, Bendigo, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Patterson Lakes, Frankston area, South Gippsland, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Trafalgar and Moe as well as Wollongong in New South Wales.
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
So we are also an NDIS, TAC (Victoria) and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Also have a look at our range of full service provisions.
Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.
This is Patrik from Intensive Care at Home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update.