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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 whilst providing quality care and where we also provide tailor made solutions for hospitals and Intensive Care Units to save money and resources where we provide win-win situations for all of our stakeholders and clients.

So in last week’s blog, I talked about

CAN MY HUSBAND GO HOME AFTER A STROKE AND A TRACHEOSTOMY TO BE WEANED OFF THE VENTILATOR AT HOME?

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video

https://intensivecareathome.com/can-my-husband-go-home-after-a-stroke-and-a-tracheostomy-to-be-weaned-off-the-ventilator-at-home/

In today’s blog, I want to answer another question from one of our readers and prospective clients today. I want to answer a question from Frank.

Can Intensive Care at Home Help with Getting our Son Home?

So Frank writes in, he says,

Hi Patrik, our 22-year old son has a tracheostomy and he has been ventilated and he has been recently moved from ICU to a step down unit where he’s now just with a tracheostomy and it’s like a respiratory ward and he’s been weaned off the ventilator now for at least a couple of weeks.

Now he seems to be stuck there on the ward and we feel very unsure about this respiratory ward, because we have seen in intensive care that the doctors and the nurses were very capable of looking after tracheostomy ventilation and now on the ward, we feel like our son is almost getting neglected.

They have not mapped out a plan for getting him home. He probably will need the tracheostomy for quite some time to come because he’s unable to swallow at the moment and he’s unable to cough so that he can clear his secretions.

We would love to have him at home to recover because it’s so difficult what we are going through, especially with some of the hospitals still having COVID-19 restrictions so we can’t really visit him and we can’t be with him around the clock like we need to be. Can intensive care at home help with getting our son home?

From Frank

Hi Frank,

thank you so much for asking this question and absolutely if your son is stuck on a respiratory ward in the hospital, not ventilated, but he does need the tracheostomy still, then definitely we can help getting him home with intensive care at home with 24 hour nursing care with intensive care nurses that are tracheostomy and ventilation competent.

I can absolutely understand your hesitation and your apprehension, having your son on the respiratory ward, where he’s probably looked after by some of the nurses that are not 100% tracheostomy competent, and it is a specialist skill to look after someone with a tracheostomy, even when they’re not ventilated, the risk of something going wrong is significant and also deadly if things do go wrong!

And the reason I’m mentioning that is that, unfortunately in the last few weeks, we actually had two clients passed away that did not have 24-hour nursing care with the tracheostomy and those clients unfortunately passed away while there was no nurse present, even though we and the families had advocated for 24-hour nursing care with an intensive care nurse, the funding body/ health insurance was still assessing the application.

Well, unfortunately, it’s now too late because very young clients have passed away and it’s just very tragic. And there is also evidence from the mechanical home ventilation guidelines that we publish on our website. The evidence clearly demands that an intensive care nurse has to be present 24 hours a day for someone with a tracheostomy or with a ventilator.

 

You can find the mechanical home ventilation guidelines here

https://intensivecareathome.com/mechanical-home-ventilation-guidelines/

So we’re not sure why the funding bodies are assessing because the evidence is there and money should never be in the way of saving people’s lives. But unfortunately this is what’s happened recently for some of our clients and it’s just a disgrace and people need to take accountability for delaying funding decisions that probably have led to very young clients passing away.

Coming back to your situation, Frank, yes, so your son can go home with 24-hour nursing care. We can help you with the advocacy to get the funding for your son so he can get evidence-based care, which is 24-hour nursing care at home for a tracheostomy with intensive care nurses.

So I really hope that answers your question that we can make this happen for you and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

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, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, 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.

Also, we have been part of the Royal Melbourne health accelerator program in the past for innovative healthcare companies.

https://www.thermh.org.au/news/innovation-funding-announced-melbourne-health-accelerator

https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/

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.