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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 actually published one of my YouTube live sessions for families in intensive care that you can watch if you’re clicking on the link below this video.

SHOULD MY SISTER HAVE A TRACHEOSTOMY AND GO HOME WITH INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME? LIVE STREAM!

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

https://intensivecareathome.com/should-my-sister-have-a-tracheostomy-and-go-home-with-intensive-care-at-home-live-stream/

In today’s video blog, I want to talk to intensive care nurses because we get a lot of questions such as,

What’s it Like to Work for Intensive Care at Home?

Now, first off, I know the last years have been incredibly difficult with the pandemic, whether it’s been in ICU, it’s probably the worst it’s ever been, but it’s also been certainly challenging on our end, as the demand for our service has grown and gone through the roof, because simply nobody wants to be in intensive care, and people want to be at home, instead, which makes perfect sense.

Nobody wanted to be in intensive care before COVID, let alone in the last two years, given the vulnerability, or the high levels of vulnerability and the high levels of complexity for our clients, they would be highly susceptible to catching COVID in ICU. Therefore, they all want to stay at home at all costs. That’s what our mission here, at Intensive Care at Home, is to provide a genuine alternative for long-term intensive care patients, predominantly, long term ventilated intensive care patients with tracheostomies, adults and children. That obviously requires us to provide these services with intensive care nurses with a minimum of two years ICU experience, ideally with a post-graduate critical care qualification.

Again, we get lots of questions. What is it like to work for Intensive Care at Home as a critical care nurse? I want to dive a little bit deeper into that topic today, because I know a lot of intensive care nurses are looking for jobs at the moment because they are burnt out, because the last few in hospitals, nurse to patient ratios in intensive care prior to the pandemic were almost guaranteed a one to one nurse to patient ratio.

For some HDU, or high dependency unit patients, you would’ve had a one to two nurse to patient ratio, but that has eroded in the last two years because obviously ICUs got flooded with COVID patients, and therefore, there was also an erosion of nursing care standards. It was no longer a one to one in many units because of lack of staff because they got flooded with COVID patients, and other patients, of course, that needed intensive care. Therefore, the workload was just simply going through the roof.

Now, whilst our workload has gone through the roof as well, at least here we can guarantee a one to one nurse to patient ratio because it’s in a patient’s home. It’s in a client’s home, and we are not in a hospital. Our mission is to keep clients at home. It’s always a one to one. Now, you might also be wondering, what’s the support? The support in a home care environment is predominantly that there is a support worker working with you, like a Disability Support Worker, or a carer that’s working with you to support whatever needs to be done with a particular client, whether it’s mobilization, whether it’s going out with them, whatever the case may be. But, it’s a guaranteed one to one, and with additional help.

That’s one of the main advantages working for Intensive Care at Home, that your nurse to patient ratio is actually guaranteed because in a home care environment, we can’t just give you another patient. That’s just not how it works because you’ll be at somebody’s home.

You might also be wondering, what is it like in someone’s home? If it’s a good fit working for you with one of our clients, you’ll almost be part of the family. The family wants to know about you, who you are as a person, and likewise, you’ll get to know our families and our clients, really almost on an intimate level. It can be very rewarding working in a home care environment because we are making such a big difference to our clients’ life. You can be a part of that, making sure that our clients, and their families, can improve and maintain their quality of life at home, rather than staying in intensive care indefinitely, or sometimes, the only perceived option from an ICU perspective is end of life. We have changed that paradigm, and we have given clients an option to live on their terms in a home care environment.

You might also be wondering, what about variety? Will you be only going to one client, or will there be variety? Of course, we have a large and growing client base, and therefore there is a variety, if you want to, because we can send you to different clients. Now, whilst our families, of course, want stability on their rosters, they don’t want a revolving door. You can definitely choose between, depending on how many hours you want to work a week, between one, two, or even three clients, that way you can work. That gives you the variety.

You can actually build your portfolio in Intensive Care at Home. You can put on your CV that you’ve worked in different intensive care at home environments, different age groups, different clinical pictures. You can really build your portfolio with Intensive Care at Home, by looking after different clients with different clinical conditions, and also different family dynamics, different setups. You can look after adults, you can look after young adults, you can look after teenagers. We have a wide variety of client and client ages. You can really build your expertise and your portfolio there.

Now, a lot of ICU nurses have come to us, also ask in the beginning, on what’s the support? Do I always have to make decisions by myself? Absolutely not. There’s always a senior nurse on call. You can escalate to medical professionals, of course, to doctors as well, if need be. All of our clients have care plans. All of our clients have an escalation of treatment care plan. They have an advanced care plan, most of the time, where goals of care are outlined and documented. We are working alongside that.

Now, other things that happen, especially on day shifts, for example, a lot of our clients want to go out and they’re able to, because they’ve got the intensive care nurse that can keep them safe. They want to live a life, even if it’s only going down the road to the shopping center. Some of our clients are going to school, to university. There are a variety of activities that can happen during daytime. In particular, obviously nighttime is very different. Nighttime, it’s all about the comfort of the patient, or the client, in their home, making sure they get a good night’s sleep, that all of their nursing care is being done.

It really depends a little bit on day or on night shift, what’s happening on a particular shift, but at the end of the day, it’s all about maintaining that family feel, maintaining the quality of life for the client and for the family, away from the busy ICU, full of infections. Because the home care environment is a clean environment, generally speaking, the risk for infections in a home care environment is so much reduced.

That’s it in a nutshell, what you can expect when you do work for Intensive Care at Home. We also have other career opportunities, such as we are currently looking for a clinical liaison nurse. We are currently looking for a nurse unit manager, or for a nurse manager. We also sometimes have team leader positions. What that means is that some of our clients, especially, need a team leader to lead the team on a particular roster, to lead the clinical care, and so forth. Those positions come up as well.

That’s it, in a nutshell.

If you are interested in a position for Intensive Care at Home, go to our career section. There’s more information there. You can just simply send me an email to [email protected]. That’s [email protected].

You can also call me here, in Australia, on 0410942230. That’s again, 0410942230. I can tell you more about the positions we have available. I can tell you more about the locations we have available, predominantly in Melbourne metropolitan, but also country Victoria, especially in the Warragul area, Sunbury area, Bendigo area, which is where we are looking for staff at the moment, predominantly, but also in the Wollongong area in New South Wales, close to Sydney, and also in Brisbane in Queensland.

I hope that helps. Gives you more insight.

If you have a loved one in intensive care and you want to go home with our service Intensive Care at Home, and 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].

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. You can also look at our case studies, as well, at our service section. service section.

Intensive Care At Home Case studies

If you are at home already and you need support for your critically loved one at home on a ventilator, or with other medically complex conditions, where you need an ICU nurse, and you have insufficient support, or insufficient funding, please contact us as well. We can help you.

If you are an intensive care nurse, and you’re looking for a career change, contact us, as well, and have a look at our career section. As I said, we are looking for staff, ICU nurses and pediatric ICU nurses with a minimum of two years ICU experience for clients in the Melbourne Metropolitan area, Sunbury, Northern Suburbs, Mornington Peninsula, Frankston area, South Gippsland, as well as Wollongong in New South Wales, and in Brisbane.

www.intensivecareathome.com/careers

We are also an NDIS, TAC and DVA approved community service provider in Australia. Have a look at our range of full service provisions.

We have also 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

https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/

Thank you for watching this video and thank you for tuning into this week’s blog.

This is Patrik Hutzel from Intensive Care at Home, and I’ll see you again next week in another update. Take care.