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Here’s More Evidence Why ICU Nurses are Life Savers in the Community & Support Workers are a Danger!

If you want to know why disability support workers are the biggest threat for NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) participants’ lives, especially when they’re medically complex, stay tuned. I’ve got news for you.

My name is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com. In today’s video blog, I want to talk about one of the nursing assessments that we’ve done recently for NDIS participants. Part of our skill is to do NDIS nursing assessments for NDIS participants that are also medically complex.

So, in a nursing assessment that we’ve done recently, we have done this nursing assessment for an NDIS participant with cerebral palsy and the nursing assessment that’s done by a critical care nurse that also has a legal nurse consulting background writes the following:

“The NDIS participant has epilepsy and commonly has absence seizures. Absence seizures involve brief, sudden lapses of consciousness, and in this NDIS participant’s case also presents with lip smacking and vocalizations.

The seizures increase when the NDIS participant is unwell. These seizures pose a risk to the NDIS participant’s lungs as the participant is unable to cough and swallow effectively during a seizure, and therefore, saliva may run down into the lungs and cause chest infections through aspiration.

The NDIS participant requires suctioning of the oral cavity if there is saliva that is unable to be swallowed during a seizure. Care staff need to be able to immediately recognize when the NDIS participant is having a seizure and be able to implement airway protection measures to prevent aspiration pneumonia during a seizure.

Critical care registered nurses are trained in seizure management and would be able to skillfully care for the NDIS participant. Thereby, reducing the risk of aspiration and likely subsequent lung infection. If the NDIS participant was to aspirate and develop a lung infection, this would be life threatening and could result in the NDIS participant’s death.

The NDIS participant has had multiple hospital admissions for aspiration pneumonia which occurs when food or fluid enters lungs.”

Now, bear in mind, this is an NDIS participant that has not had any nursing care so far whatsoever. He’s been looked after by support workers, and you will see what happened there in a minute.

“This has included admissions to ICU for 8 days for respiratory support and advanced monitoring. The first admission earlier in the year was due to disability support workers in an SDA (Special Disability Accommodation) on the NDIS participant’s first morning giving them three times the amount of PEG formula feeds the NDIS participant was supposed to receive.”

Now once again, PEG feeding should not be done by a disability support worker, that is a registered nurse skill. So, the NDIS nursing assessment continues,

“Additionally, the disability support worker did not recognize the NDIS participant’s required suctioning of the vomit from the mouth because this is outside of their scope of practice, and they did not recognize that the NDIS participant was becoming unwell. The required daily vital sign observations were not performed.”

And they shouldn’t perform it because they couldn’t interpret it. Keep in mind, disability support workers might have worked in a supermarket last week, stocking shelves in a supermarket and now, they’re supposed to look after a complex disability participant with medically complex issues. That is insane and that is what the NDIS wants. This is absolutely insane.

Now, the NDIS nursing assessment continues,

“So, the required vital sign observations were not performed, and deterioration was missed by the disability support worker until the NDIS participant’s sister visited and recognized that she was critically ill.

An ambulance was called, and the NDIS participant was rushed to the hospital and treated as a Code One in the resuscitation area of the emergency department. Had the NDIS participant not been visited by her family is likely she would have continued to deteriorate without the disability support worker or anybody noticing and she would have died.

The NDIS participant returned to the SDA in May where the NDIS participant again vomited and aspirated overnight. The following morning, the NDIS participant was transferred to hospital for another episode of aspiration pneumonia.

The third admission to hospital occurred just a month later where the NDIS participant had a day visit to the SDA. The NDIS participant aspirated again and was required to be admitted to hospital with aspiration pneumonia.

This repeat insult to the NDIS participant’s lungs from aspiration pneumonia has caused scarring of the right lung. This has decreased lung capacity and ability to breathe and has increased the disability and the risk of the NDIS participant dying if there’s further lung infections and deterioration.

The cause of this is directly linked to the care provided by disability support workers and not by registered nurses or critical care registered nurses who are airway trained and clearly demonstrate that not only is this level of care completely unsuitable, it’s dangerous, medically negligent, and life-threatening.”

And I’ll just leave the excerpt of the NDIS nursing assessment there. But this is what the NDIS wants. They’re treating people with a disability as second-class citizens because those people in the hospital would have registered nurses but when they’re going home, the NDIS wants to have disability support workers look after them and this is clearly dangerous. It is negligent and it puts more pressure on hospitals because people are going back to hospitals.

Using disability support workers for medically complex NDIS participants with a disability is like flying the airplane with a cabin crew instead of the pilot. You can’t do it and if you do do it, a disaster is striking, but that’s what Bill Shorten and his NDIS bureaucrats are wanting to do, and it’s absolutely ridiculous.

So, for anyone watching this, who has a family member with a disability, who is medically complex, you actually need registered nurses and not disability support workers looking after your family member and the funding is there.

It all comes down to providing the right evidence, which is what we help you with here at the Intensive Care at Home because not only are we trained critical care registered nurses with over 12 years of community nursing experience as well, we’re bringing intensive care nurses into the home knowing how to keep our clients at home predictably. That is our skill, but we also have the skill of advocating for the right level of funding.

So, if your NDIS Support Coordinator is telling you there is no funding for nurses, they shouldn’t be working in the NDIS space. It means they don’t want to do the work, that’s what it is, or they don’t know how to do the work. In any case, now you know what to do and you know where to seek help.

Now, with Intensive Care at Home, we are providing intensive care nursing at home for ventilation, tracheostomy, Home BIPAP (Bilevel Positive Airway Pressure), Home CPAP (Continuous Positive Airway Pressure) ventilation without tracheostomy, home tracheostomy care without ventilation, Home TPN (Total Parenteral Nutrition), home IV potassium infusion, and home IV magnesium infusion. We’re also providing port management, central line management, PICC (Peripherally Inserted Central Catheter) line management, as well as Hickman’s line management, and we’re also providing palliative care services at home.

We’re also sending our critical care nurses into the home for emergency department bypass services. We have done so in the past successfully for the Western Sydney Local Area Health District, they’re in-touch program, saving approximately $2,000 per patient that we keep at home instead of going to the emergency department.

We’re also cutting the cost of an intensive care bed by around 50%. Intensive care bed costs around $5,000 to $6,000 per bed day, and our service is about 50% of that. We’re freeing up the ICU beds and we’re improving the quality of life and in some instances, quality of end of life for patients and their families.

Now, with Intensive Care at Home, we’re currently operating all around Australia in all major capital cities as well as in all regional and rural areas. We’re an NDIS approved service provider all around the country, TAC (Transport Accident Commission) in Victoria, WorkSafe in Victoria, iCare in New South Wales, NIISQ (National Injury Insurance Scheme in Queensland), and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) all around the country. Our clients and we, as a provider, have also received funding through public hospitals, private health funds, as well as departments of health.

We are the only service provider in Australia that has achieved third-party accreditation for Intensive Care at Home nursing in 2024. We’ve been having and achieving this level of accreditation since 2012. No other provider has achieved this high level of accreditation and has created as much intellectual property for Intensive Care at Home nursing than we have. We are therefore in a position to employ hundreds of years of critical care and intensive care nursing experience in the community combined. No other provider in the community brings this much expertise into the community than we do.

If you’re at home already and you’re watching this and you realize that you don’t have the right level of support, maybe you have disability support workers that are simply dangerous when it comes to medical complexities for NDIS participants or other participants with a disability, and you realize that your care is in danger and you’re at home on a ventilator, tracheostomy, BIPAP, CPAP, home TPN, whatever the case may be, IV fluids, and you realize that your care is in peril, reach out to us. We can help you increase the funding otherwise we would not be in business. Think about that. We have always successfully advocated for our clients from Day 1, otherwise we wouldn’t have been able to start Intensive Care at Home.

That’s also why we’re providing Level 2 and Level 3 NDIS Support Coordination. We have a team of dedicated NDIS Support Coordinators, and they have a wealth of knowledge. I’ll put a link in the written version of this blog where I have done an interview with Amanda Riches, one of our NDIS Support Coordinators. We’re also providing TAC case management in Victoria and WorkSafe case management.

If you’re an NDIS Support Coordinator or case manager from another organization watching this and you’re looking for nursing care for your participants, please reach out to us as well. If you’re looking for funding for more nursing care for your participants and you don’t know how to go about it and what evidence to provide, I also encourage you to reach out to us. We can help you with the right level of advocacy. We also provide NDIS specialist nursing assessments done by critical care nurses with a legal nurse consulting background.

If you’re a critical care nurse and you’re looking for a career change, we’re currently hiring for jobs for critical care nurses in the home in Melbourne, Sydney, Brisbane in Albury, Wodonga, in Bendigo, in Geelong, and in Warragul, all in Victoria. If you have worked in critical care for a minimum of two years, pediatric ICU, ED, and you have already completed the postgraduate critical care nursing qualification, we will be delighted to hear from you.

I have a disclaimer because we are offering a tailor-made solution for our clients, which includes regular staff, our clients want to have the same staff coming over and over again because they are very vulnerable and so special. It’s all about building those critical relationships with our clients and with our team members and having regular and stable teams.

That means if you’re looking for agency work where you can come and go, this is probably not the right fit for you because we want regular staff, and our clients want regular staff. Everything we do is driven by our clients.

Also, if you’re an intensive care specialist or an ED specialist, we also want to hear from you. We are currently expanding our medical team as well. We can also help you eliminate your bed blocks in ICU, ED for your long-term patients or for your regular readmitting patients with our critical care nursing team at home. We are here to help you to take the pressure off your ICU and ED beds and in most cases, you won’t even pay for it. But even if you do pay for it, it’s much more cost-effective than what you’re paying in ED or in ICU for.

If you’re a hospital executive watching this and you have bed blocks in your ICU, ED, respiratory wards, please reach out to us as well. We can help you fast.

If you’re in the U.S. or in the U.K. and you’re watching this and you need help, we want to hear from you as well. We can help you there privately.

Once again, our website is intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website or send us an email to [email protected].

If you like my videos, subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families with Intensive Care at Home and intensive care, click the like button, click the notification bell, share this video with your friends and families and leave your comments below what you think, what you want to see next, and what do you think about today’s topic, and what insights you have from this video.

Thank you so much for watching.

This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com and I will talk to you in a few days.

Take care.