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:
In today’s blog post, I want to answer a question from one of our clients and the question today is
How Do We Train ICU Nurses for Intensive Care at Home so Clients Can Get the Best Quality of Life at Home?
Hi, it’s Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com where we provide tailor-made solutions for long-term ventilated, adults and children with tracheostomies at home. And where we also provide tailor-made solutions for medically complex clients in the home as a genuine alternative to a long-term intensive care stay. And we also provide home TPN.
So, today I want to address a question from a client and it’s a question we get quite frequently. And I think it’s important that I make a video about it, so that our clients and prospective clients understand how we operate for Intensive Care at Home clients, what happens in a home care environment and so forth.
So the question is, how do we train staff when we first start with a new client, or how do we train new staff for existing clients when we have the need to introduce new staff? So that’s a great question.
So let me just quickly break it down a bit more in terms of staff training, new staff, what if we already have an existing roster, how do we deal with new staff? Because we know our clients want consistency. We want consistency. It’s not a good use of anyone’s time to keep introducing new staff all the time. When we hire and interview staff, our ICU nurses, we explain to them that our clients want consistency. They don’t want a revolving door. We certainly don’t want a revolving door. We know how important consistencies for our clients. So that the staff understand and know the routine of the day to day nursing care so that we can provide the care that clients want and need within their routine.
So let me start with our staff’s qualifications.
So all of our staff have a minimum of two years ICU or pediatric ICU nursing experience. So you get very experienced staff. We employ hundreds of years of ICU nursing experience in the community. I’m not aware that any provider in any English speaking country has ICU nurses in the community, please correct me if I’m wrong. But I’m just not aware of that. ICU nurses get sent in the community. We are exception to the rule. We are sending hundreds of years of ICU nursing and pediatric ICU nursing experience in the community, so that our clients can leave intensive care and have quality of life at home.
So that’s number one, you get a very experienced, intensive care nurse in the home that doesn’t need to learn about ventilation, tracheostomy and PEG (Percutaneous Endoscopic Gastrostomy) tubes. That’s bread and butter for an intensive care nurse. What we do need to learn of course is the routine and how you want things done? That’s the major difference.
And we also appreciate that doesn’t happen overnight. It takes training. It takes patience, it takes commitment. It takes a lot of patience from both sides because whilst we are safe with the equipment side of things. Again, that’s bread and butter. We need time to learn about your or your loved one’s routine. How do you want the day shift’s running? How do you want the afternoon shift’s running? How do you want the night shift’s running? What is important for you? And that’s what we need to learn about. There’s no question about that. But bear in mind, how did we get this service up and running while we started with one client at some point, and I was actually doing the first shift there. Well, it’s a case of, we have no issue whatsoever to look after a client at home, on a ventilator with a tracheostomy, and then we need to start learning about the routine and that’s how we got started.
And we know that, we’ve got a proposition here with Intensive Care at Home that clients want, because who wants to be in ICU, if they can be at home with a critical care nurse, if they’re on a ventilator with a tracheostomy.
So, that’s hopefully answering one part of the question. So then next is, what about communication? If clients can’t communicate, if they are non-verbal, if they can’t use a computer, some of our clients can use a computer with an eye gaze and they can communicate that way. Others can’t verbally communicate and they need often their spouse, their parents to communicate for them. And that makes things a little bit more tricky, of course. But then again, I do believe as critical care nurses, we’re pretty well-tuned in to read non-verbal cues, to read body language.
As you may know, it’s only 7% of what we say with words, it’s over 70% of communication that happens via body language. And I think we are pretty clued in, on reading people’s body language. I think that’s part of our skill. So I really want to acknowledge the anxiety here from clients that staff consistency, by the same token, things happen in this industry as well, where sometimes we might get a last minute sick call. Life happens, people have sick kids. They have a flu or whatever. And then we might have to send someone that hasn’t worked with a client before in an emergency, but it’s still better than going back to ICU because that’s often the alternative. And you certainly don’t want to go back to ICU. That’s where there’s infections, where there’s still COVID and staff shortages.
We can guarantee you one-to-one nurse to patient ratio with an ICU nurse. That is actually much better compared to what’s happening in most ICUs at the moment when they can’t guarantee a one-to-one nurse to patient ratio any longer because staffing limits are depleted. So we have a lot to offer for our clients and for our staff, I believe.
And I hope that answers your questions around, how do we introduce staff? Another thing, that I should mention on that note is, for some of our clients, we actually have care coordinators. So, almost like client coordinator, client manager, obviously they’re critical care nurses too, and they train the staff. So we have avenues to make that happen. And, you just got to talk to us. You got to start the dialogue. We will work with you one-to-one and make sure we offer a tailor-made service to you and your family. So that you can relax at home and have the critical care nurses coming 24-hours a day, and feel safe for your loved ones, looked after. You can stay out of ICU and you can move on with your lives.
So that’s my tip and video for today.
If you have any questions regarding our service, just reach out at [email protected] or call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website at intensivecareathome.com.
If you are in Australia, you should get NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme) funding for our service. But also if you are in Victoria. TAC (Transport Accident Commission) funding in new south Wales, iCare funding and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs). We are also DVA approved. So you should definitely contact us, also private health funds pay for our service. So you should absolutely reach out to us and talk to us.
Now, if you have a loved one in intensive care, and you want to go home again, go to intensivecareathome.com. Call us on one of the numbers on the top of our website, or send us an email to [email protected].
Also, check out our membership for families in intensive care at intensivecaresupport.org. We also provide medical record reviews for your loved one in intensive care or after intensive care.
If you like this video, give it a thumbs up. Subscribe to my YouTube channel for regular updates for families in intensive care and Intensive Care at Home. Subscribe to my YouTube channel, comment below what questions and insights you have from this video and what you want to see next, and click the notification bell.
Thanks for watching.
This is Patrik Hutzel from intensivecareathome.com, and I’ll talk to you in a few days.