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This blog post was first published at our sister site http://intensivecarehotline.com/blog/
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In last week’s blog I described that INTENSIVE CARE HOTLINE wants to help our readers and subscribers by providing the best and most valuable website and blog for Families and Friends who have a critically ill loved one in Intensive Care. That’s a bold statement to make that INTENSIVE CARE HOTLINE wants to be the best and most valuable website and blog for Families and Friends who have a critically ill loved one in Intensive Care.
Why do we want to achieve that, how do we do it and where did it all start?
We want to achieve our bold claim and bold goal, because I personally think that with all the difficulties, challenges and issues that a Family of a critically ill Patient is dealing with when their loved one is admitted to Intensive Care, there is simply not enough support for those Families. There are no or not enough dedicated and tailor made resources for Families and Friends who have a critically ill loved one in Intensive Care. One thing that I have seen and noticed when doing my research when I first started thinking about launching a platform for Families of critically ill Intensive Care Patients was that there are a million websites out there about clinical pictures, about Intensive Care, Critical Care, diseases, illnesses etc… But here’s the deal. Most of these websites are from health professionals for health professionals. Very few websites- if any- and resources are purely designed for Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care with the goal of improving their lives by giving them insights, strategies and resources. The support in Intensive Care units for Families is more often than not falling short and information from health professionals in Intensive Care need to be taken for face value. This can be a good thing and I am not suggesting that you can’t trust that information. But especially in difficult and challenging situations, such as end of life, long- term ventilation and/or severe critical illness with expected future Quality of Life issues, who is actually helping Families to cope with the burden that they and their critically ill loved one are facing? Who can give Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care perspective and advice when it comes to their critically ill loved one approaching their end of life? Who is giving Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care perspective and advice if their critically ill loved one has been in Intensive Care for more than 40 days on a ventilator with Tracheostomy with no outlook of improvement? Who is giving Families of critically ill Patients perspective and advice if their loved one has just had a major accident or a cardiac arrest and their critically ill loved one is looking forward to an uncertain future, with a possible negative impact on their future Quality of life? How do Families and their loved ones cope with such massive dilemmas? Who can point them in the right direction and who can show them how to cope during their stressful, overwhelming, challenging, emotional and difficult journey in Intensive Care, whilst their loved one is critically ill? Who can show them how to effectively deal with their fears, frustrations and vulnerabilities? Who can show Families of critically ill Patients in Intensive Care how to manage the doctors and nurses more efficiently so that they have more control, more power and are able to influence decision making? Who can show them the mistakes they are making whilst their loved one is critically ill in Intensive Care that is holding them back in managing their situation more effectively and efficiently?
Health professionals in Intensive Care tend to be extremely time poor and they are not trained to give you answers to the more fundamental questions once your critically ill loved one has been admitted to Intensive Care. And with the more fundamental questions I mean the questions that refer to you and your Family and how you cope and deal with the situation and how much you know and how much you understand in the situation. We believe that INTENSIVE CARE HOTLINE has a lot of answers to those questions and challenges and because of what I mentioned before, there is no other resource and website at this point in time that can offer such succinct and tailor made advice than we do and at this point in time it’s all free of charge. All you need to do is to browse the website and enter your name and email and you’ll get your first FREE report!
You can also look at our FREE “get your questions answered” http://intensivecarehotline.com/your-questions-answered where I answer a weekly question of a reader and I’m sure you’ll find useful information there as well!
With this in mind I hope you are enjoying this website and our information and send us your questions and comments to [email protected]. I answer emails personally and usually within less than 24 hours!
Sincerely, your friend
Patrik Hutzel