My Brother is Very Sick in ICU with a Mental Health Condition & the Doctor Said He Will Be Out in Palliative Care. Can You Please Advise Me What My Options Are? How Does your Intensive Care Program Work?

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.

In last week’s blog, I talked about,

CAN INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME TRAIN FAMILY MEMBERS TO LOOK AFTER THEIR LOVED ONES ON A VENTILATOR AND A TRACHEOSTOMY?

You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:

https://intensivecareathome.com/can-intensive-care-at-home-train-family-members-to-look-after-their-loved-ones-on-a-ventilator-and-a-tracheostomy/

In today’s blog of the intensive care at home series. I want to answer a question from Athena.

My Brother is Very Sick in ICU with a Mental Health Condition & the Doctor Said He Will Be Out in Palliative Care. Can You Please Advise Me What My Options Are? How Does your Intensive Care at home Program Work?

Now Athena writes,

Hi Patrik,

My brother is very sick in ICU at a well-known hospital in Sydney. He has a mental health condition and developed catatonia. He’s bedridden and has a feeding tube. He also has type 2 diabetes and a kidney problem from the lithium treatment.

The doctor said that if his treatment for his electroconvulsive therapy doesn’t work, then they’re stopping the feeding tube, the ventilator, and he will be out in palliative care. He has been intubated as part of the catatonic issues and the convulsions. We don’t want him to die and we want to keep him alive, he’s only 37.

Can you please advise me what my options are? Do you provide advocacy? How does your intensive care program work?

Thank you for your time. We will do anything to keep him alive and get him home eventually.

From Athena

Hi Athena,

Thank you for your question and here is what I would advise as a next step. Your brother is only 37 and it sounds like, he’s very young and I’m sure you want him to live and it’s not up to the intensive care team to just send him to palliative care because they think it’s appropriate.

I don’t think it’s for anyone to say to go to palliative care, if the wishes of a patient have not been respected. I don’t know whether your brother has an advanced care directive or not, but in any case, even if he doesn’t, you ask the next of kin or medical power of attorney, can make decisions for him. And if you don’t agree that he should move to palliative care, then it’s your choice and your choice only, especially at such a young age.

The next step really is if he can’t come off the ventilator, the next step is, he probably would need a tracheostomy. If he has a tracheostomy and he’s then medically stable and he can’t be weaned off the ventilator or we’ll need some time to get off the ventilator, we can take him home and go from there.

Now, two things there, number one with the advocacy, if you look at our sister side intensivecarehotline.com, we are providing a professional consulting and advocacy service there for families in intensive care.

Number two, going home is possible with the NDIS now, with the National Disability Insurance Scheme here in Australia, as you’re aware, your brother is only 37 and the NDIS with the right advocacy funds 24-hour nursing care at home with intensive care nurses for ventilation and tracheostomy. So we can help you with the advocacy and we can help you with taking your brother home with intensive care at home, if that’s what you wish.

So I hope that answers your question. Please reach out to us if you want to take the next step. Thank you so much.

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

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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.

YOUR INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME

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