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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 whilst providing quality care and where we also provide tailor made solutions for hospitals and Intensive Care Units to save money and resources where we provide win-win situations for all of our stakeholders and clients.
So in last week’s blog, I talked about
CAN INTENSIVE CARE AT HOME HELP WITH GETTING OUR SON HOME?
You can check out last week’s blog by clicking on the link below this video
https://intensivecareathome.com/can-intensive-care-at-home-help-with-getting-our-son-home/
In today’s blog, I want share with you a letter from one of our wonderful ICU nurses at Intensive care at home as she shares her experience working for Intensive Care at Home.
“Words Cannot Express How Much I Love Working for Intensive Care at Home. My Role is Not Only to Keep my Patient’s Safe But to Aid in Increasing their Quality of Life”
Hi Patrik,
Thank you very much for getting this to me, and moreover thank you for the very kind words!
I remember when Patrik and Cathy interviewed me for almost two hours asking patient specific questions to see if I would fit for ICAH and I left feeling like that was the most difficult interview I’d been in, however I got a call days later with a job offer from Patrik. I was so excited and still feel quite lucky that I was given the opportunity.
Working with ICAH was my first introduction to healthcare in Australia and it was the most influential, difficult and beautiful and intimate jobs I’ve ever encountered. I learned to drive in Australia through ICAH, learned to know the Mornington Peninsula, Gippsland, the Melbourne CBD; learned to deal with intense social dynamics of families and learned that to understand those dynamics comes a great deal of empathy and love.
Most importantly, I learned to care deeply for the ICAH patients and families I was privileged to care for: Mary and Ava, Lianne, April, Kaye, and RJ, Carol and Jeff and her family and Paul and family and beautiful little Sarah.
I wrote this blog post if anyone cares to read, when I first began my journey at ICAH:
“Remember to drive on the left side of the road, Ms.” The rental car employee told me before handing me my keys. I was super grateful for this reminder as the last few trials of driving in Australia left me wishing there was a universal way steering wheels on cars were manufactured (I didn’t mean to turn into oncoming traffic).
Last week after my driving session, I definitely preferred four way stops over roundabouts and I felt like I was never going to fully grasp driving on the opposite side of the road.
Today, I drove two hours along the coast from Melbourne to Mornington Peninsula, with zero complications.
I have chosen a job working as a Critical Care Nurse at patient’s homes. This means I could travel from 20 miles from my house to 2 hours away in more rural areas. My patients are stable yet ventilator dependent, and words cannot express how much I love my job and I love who I get to care for throughout my days and nights.
With my job role comes an immense amount of responsibility. I am constantly critically thinking of what could happen and how do I respond to that scenario in my head, without that red emergency button above a patient’s bed, as I’m used to in the hospital environment.
There is no Rapid Response team of nurses, no doctors, and no respiratory therapists running to the room to help or to ensure my patient’s airway is patent or to help troubleshoot the ventilator. There is, me.
Although-this is what I’ve signed up for, this is why I sat tall in that two and a half hour interview with my now boss, answering specifics of how I would respond in critical situations.
The difference of working in the community (home health) vs. hospital is I feel my connection with whom I am caring for now is a lot more intimate. I spend most of my days and nights caring for them and literally doing everyday life with them.
I am sometimes their arms and legs, their voice at times. I have to really use my interpersonal skills and pick up on cues, facial expressions, and even feelings. I have to tap in and lean into those feelings and grasp them to understand my client’s needs, especially if they’re nonverbal.
It’s not spending two days with a patient then discharging them home and wishing them well, it’s literally embracing and encompassing different facets of your patient’s life, maintaining their dignity throughout nursing care.
It is important to me that my patients have some locus of control in their life, especially if that’s been taken away from them. My role is not only to keep them safe, but it is to aid in increasing their quality of life.
A few hours ago, I was driving my little hatchback rental car on the opposite side of the road, with music blaring, following the coast to Mornington Peninsula, I remembered that this is exactly what I envisioned for my life in my twenties; to be an international travel RN in Australia, traveling to coastal areas, taking care of vulnerable peoples and loving them in the process.
Thank you Patrik and Cathy and all of ICAH team. It’s been a true pleasure. I’ll see y’all at the Christmas dinner.
From Tara
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 and Wagga Wagga in New South Wales.
For Wagga Wagga we have fly-in-fly-out options!
www.intensivecareathome.com/careers
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
https://www.melbournehealthaccelerator.com/
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.