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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,
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video:
Now in today’s blog post, I want to continue where I finished off last week. Last week’s blog post, I talked about that we are hiring Intensive Care nurses and Pediatric Intensive Care nurses here at Intensive Care at Home. And today, I want to talk about
What Is It Like to Work for Intensive Care at Home for Intensive Care Nurses and Pediatric Intensive Care Nurses?
So, I want to focus on our intensive care nurses and pediatric intensive care nurses that come to us and because they want to know, what is it like to work for Intensive Care at Home? Is it similar to working in ICU? They have all these questions piling up and I thought I’ll make a quick video about it, so hopefully to give you an insight, what is it like to work for us.
So, it’s probably fairly different compared to what you’re used to in intensive care. And the reason for that is simply, that a home care environment is very different. Yes, we do need your ICU and pediatric ICU nursing skills. No question about that. Most of our clients are at home on a ventilator with a tracheostomy after all. And as we all know, only intensive care nurses with a minimum of two years ICU experience can look after those patients safely, especially in a home care environment where there are fewer resources around and fewer staff around compared to an ICU setting.
But everything else is actually very different because you are in a family environment. You are in an environment that is highly, highly sensitive because obviously our clients and their families have high expectations. They want to make sure that you are the right fit for their home environment. They will test you quite frankly. They want to see whether you are the right fit, not only clinically, but also on a social and family level. Are you fitting in with the family dynamics and so forth? Those are really important points.
One thing that I underestimated for a long time is really, that it’s quite a big deal for the families having somebody new coming into their home. As much as the families need us, and they need you and your skills, the next biggest question for them is, are you the right fit for them and for their family environment? So, that is one of the major differences compared to ICU, because, in ICU you get allocated to a particular patient and then you do your shift and then when you’re back the next day, you might not even see that patient again.
Whereas in our environment, it’s all about repetition, it’s all about familiarity. Families want to know that if you sign up with us and if you are successful with us, that you are committed to the care you are giving to a particular client. They want to build a relationship with you. Most of our clients that we worked with, we have worked with for many years now, and we certainly have built strong relationships with them. That’s a result of having strong relationships between the families and the nurses that are working with those clients.
But just like with anything else, we also want to give you variety, which means, you could work with more than one client. Some of it depends on location of course. How far away are you from a particular client? That’s all coming into play. So, it depends, of course, on what’s your skillset. Is it a male or a female client? Are you a male nurse? Are you a female nurse? From my perspective and experience, all of our nurses that we hire can work with every client because we hire for skills, and we also hire for attitude. The only exception is that, sometimes clients have preferences for only either male nurses or only female nurses, depending on the circumstances of the client.
Other things that we do from our end obviously is, we have electronic records. That’s one way for us to communicate so that we can keep up to date with the clinical things at hand. We use an app where we communicate and where we share clinical information. We have regular team meetings for particular clients so that the team can get together so that we can debrief, and we do that on a regular basis. We also have a clinical liaison nurse and we’re advertising for another clinical liaison nurse at the moment to keep supporting our growing operations in the community.
So that’s it in a nutshell, what’s it like working for us. We have a large team of ICU nurses on the road and it’s probably less of a crowded environment compared to ICU. And it’s a much nicer environment compared to ICU.
In ICU, you have people around all the time or colleagues. Whereas in a home care environment, it’s you, it’s the family, it’s the client, it’s often also the support worker that’s helping you as well. But unlike ICU now, it’s definitely a one-to-one nurse-to-patient ratio. And you should absolutely check it out, especially if you’re a bit weary and tired of ICU where the nurse-to-patient ratio has been going down with COVID hitting ICUs. And working conditions in ICU clearly deteriorating. If you’re tired, if you’re worn out, you should definitely come to us. It’s a much nicer environment and it’s much more patient and family-friendly. It’s really focused on what the clients want, what the clients need whilst using our intensive care nursing skills and our compassion. We would really like to hear from you.
If you are interested, you can send me an email to [email protected] or you can just go on our career section on our website as well if you are interested. You can call me on 041 094 2230, or on one of the numbers on the top of our website, intensivecareathome.com.
Take care for now.
If you have a loved one in intensive care, and you are looking for help, and you want to take your loved one 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].
Please also have a look at our case studies because there we highlight more about what we can do for our clients, how clients can live at home with ventilation and tracheostomies. And you can look at our case studies as well on our case studies section on our website.
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 it.
And I talked to you about our intensive care nurses and pediatric intensive care nurses with a minimum of 2 years, ICU or pediatric ICU experience. We are currently hiring nurses for clients in the Melbourne Metropolitan area, Northern Suburbs, Sunbury, Mornington Peninsula, Bittern, Frankston area, Patterson Lake, South Gippsland, Trafalgar, Drouin, Warragul, Trida, Moe, and also in Bendigo.
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
We are an NDIS (National Disability Insurance Scheme), TAC (Transport Accident Commission) and DVA (Department of Veteran Affairs) approved community service provider in Australia. Have a look at our range of full-service provisions.
Thank you so much for tuning into this week’s blog.
This is Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care At Home, and I will talk to you in a few days.