Podcast: Play in new window | Download
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,
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
https://intensivecareathome.com/addressing-icu-nurses/
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is
“Does Intensive Care at Home Take Intubated Patients?”
So this is a question we get quite frequently, whether at Intensive Care at Home, we take intubated patients, which means are we taking patients on a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube home?
The short version to that question is no. However, there is one exception to that rule. Let me just explain to you why we don’t take intubated patients. An intubated patient belongs into intensive care at this particular point in time. They are too critically ill and also it’s not considered a stable airway, a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube. If the breathing tube or an endotracheal comes out, for whatever reason it takes reintubation by a doctor. Whereas if a tracheostomy falls out at home, it can be reinserted by one of our critical care nurses. Now that is the shorter version to that question.
There’s other reasons as well, why we don’t take intubated patients. Often intubated patients are on multiple doses of inotropes or vasopressors. They’re often in an induced coma and also intubation should be considered as a short term measure in ICU. It should not be a long term measure or long term treatment in ICU. Whereas if someone has a tracheostomy, it is often considered long term and many patients have a tracheostomy and ventilation long term, and that’s absolutely why they’re the right fit for us for Intensive Care at Home if they can’t be weaned off the ventilator.
For someone on a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube, their goal should be to be weaned off the ventilator full stop. If they can’t wean off the ventilator and they need a tracheostomy, and then again, they can’t be weaned off the ventilator for whatever reason. Yes. Then they’re absolutely a candidate for Intensive Care at Home, but intubated patients, it’s just they belong into ICU for the reasons that I just mentioned.
Now, there is one exception to that rule and we have done that on a couple of occasions, we do take intubated patients home for what’s considered a one-way extubation and I have made blog posts about that about one-way extubations at home. So for example, if a patient in ICU is on a breathing tube or an endotracheal tube and is considered to be a one-way extubation for palliative care, we have done that at home where we take a patient home and do remove the breathing tube at home so they can have end of life care at home. We have done that. And if your loved one is in that situation, you should definitely contact us and consider it as an option.
Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s blog. If you have any questions, please reach out to us. Go to intensivecareathome.com, call us on one of the numbers on the top of the website, or send us an email to [email protected], that’s [email protected].
Thank you.
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.