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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 and children with tracheostomies and where we also provide tailor-made solutions for hospitals and intensive care units, whilst providing quality services for our clients as well as home BiPAP (bilevel positive airway pressure), home CPAP (continuous positive airway pressure), home VPAP (variable positive airway pressure), and otherwise medically complex patients at home, including home TPN (Total Parenteral nutrition), IV fluids and IV antibiotics.
Now in today’s blog, I want to answer a question from one of our readers. And it’s a question that is very close to our hearts, really, and it’s very close to the services we are providing.
Hi Patrik,
My son, he’s 20, is minimally conscious and he’s on a ventilator at home. We only have help from his ventilator company, and they have minimal engagement, mostly to change ventilators. I was wondering if your company offers any support for ventilation and tracheostomy care at home and including weaning.
Thank you so much.
From Nikki
Hi Nikki,
I’m very sorry to hear about your 20-year-old son’s situation. So this is obviously right up our alley. We can help you with 24-hour intensive care nursing at home, which is what your son needs to have really, and I can see from your email without giving too much away that you are in Australia.
So, in Australia in particular, this should be NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funded or should be funded if this happened because of an accident, maybe there’s some other compensation. But in any way at your son’s age, this should be NDIS funded and you should contact us for NDIS funding so that your son gets best and evidence-based care.
Now Nikki, when you look on our website at intensivecareathome.com, you will find a section, the Mechanical Home Ventilation Guidelines. And they are evidence based and they are a result of nearly 25 years of Intensive Care at Home nursing in Europe, mainly in Germany, but also here in Australia in the last 10 years. And those mechanical home ventilation guidelines say that anybody at home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, but even without a tracheostomy, if they’re on BiPAP or on CPAP, non-invasively ventilated, need to have a critical care nurse with a minimum of two years ICU experience or pediatric ICU experience. And that’s exactly what we are providing here at the Intensive Care at Home.
We actually provide evidence-based care. And with that evidence-based care, our clients are safe. It sounds to me like, your son’s life is really at high risk. Unfortunately, we have witnessed first-hand that when our clients were only funded for night shifts, for example, even though they were on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, and I’m not making this up here, they passed away during the day because family members or support workers, could not manage medical emergencies.
When someone is on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, they need ICU nurses 24 hours a day, just like the mechanical home ventilation guidelines suggest. They are evidence and research based.
So your next step is to contact me at intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send us an email to [email protected], so that we can help you fast by getting access to funding as quickly as possible so that we can help you as quickly as possible. So, I hope that helps.
And also we have experience with weaning at home. You haven’t shared too much about your son’s condition, but contact us, and we can help you with weaning and getting funding and getting intensive care nurses, making your son’s care at home enjoyable and workable and most of all, safe. And making sure he can live at home peacefully.
So that’s my quick video for today.
So if you have a family member at home with insufficient support and you need nursing care, or if you have a loved one in intensive care in a similar situation or with other similar conditions and you want to go home, please contact us at intensivecareathome.com. We’re operating all around Australia and in all major capital cities, including regional and remote areas. We are also now branching out into the U.S. Please contact us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or simply send us an email to [email protected].
And if your loved one is at home again or in ICU in a similar situation including BiPAP, CPAP, Home TPN, IV Fluids, IV antibiotics, please contact us as well now.
And if you are a critical care nurse, adult or pediatric trained, we want to hear from you. We have jobs all around Australia, but predominantly in Brisbane, Sydney, Melbourne. Please contact us if you’re a critical care nurse with a minimum of two years ICU/ PICU and ED experience. We want to hear from you.
Also we are NDIS, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs), NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), approved community nursing service provider in Australia. Please contact us.
And if you are an NDIS support coordinator and you know of NDIS participants that need this level of care, please contact us. If you don’t know about the advocacy that we’ve done for our clients to get NDIS nursing funding, please contact us. We can help you with that.
And if you are an intensive care specialist or ICU consultant, we want to hear from you as well. We have an opening at the moment for highly motivated ICU consultant that wants to work with us.
Now, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Click the like button, click the notification bell, 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.