Questions To Ask When Your Family Member Is Hospitalized

Below are sample questions to ask when your family member is hospitalized. These are not all-inclusive but are based on our experience to give you a foundation of information to better understand your loved one’s care.

REQUEST FOR MEDICAL RECORDS
If you are not able to be with your loved one when s/he is admitted to the hospital, it is important to get records of his/her medical status upon arrival.

Complete written list of hospital prescribed medications
Copies of X-rays (of lungs if COVID) upon arrival and most recent (if time has past since arrival)
Written system by system status – upon arrive and as often as updates are available
- neurological
- gastro-intestinal (GI)
- skin
- genitourinary (GU)
- muscular
- cardiovascular

CURRENT CARE QUESTIONS

Hospitalization can be a very emotional time for family which makes it easy to forget important questions; and in many cases you may not know what questions to ask. Here is a sample set of questions to use as a base of information to help monitor and measure your loved one’s care.

What tools do you use to assess patients on a daily basis?
- What have those trends been since her/his arrival?
What % of his lungs are damaged? (COVID specific)
- Given that damage, how long would s/he require ventilation?
- What are his/her options for lung repair?
Has s/he experienced acute respiratory distress syndrome? (COVID specific)
- If yes, what impact does that have on his/her overall recovery?
What other organs are currently impacted by his/her illness?
What happens if s/he become noncompliant to your care?
At this point in time what are ALL our options for care?
At what point does your facility consider a ventilator? (COVID specific)
- What complications does s/he face if s/he stays on the ventilator?
At what point does your facility consider a tracheostomy? (COVID specific)
- What could prevent a tracheostomy from happening?
- At what point is a tracheostomy no longer an option?
What is being done to aid his circulation?
What type of vitamin supplementation is he receiving?

Once on a ventilator, on a scale of 1-10 how would you rate her/his oxygen/ventilator compliance? (1 = noncompliant, 10 = compliant)
- How does her/his current compliance impact her/his overall recovery?
What are your COVID protocols for visitation? (COVID specific)
- What has to happen for a family member to go into the room to be with him?
- What are your policies for family if s/he codes (goes into cardiopulmonary arrest) during COVID care?

FUTURE CARE QUESTIONS

Future care questions are often the hardest to ask because families want to stay optimistic. Asking questions doesn’t make you pessimistic, it allows you to prepare for all possible outcomes. You can get answers without having a doctor or nurse offer their feelings on your family member’s life expectancy. However, you can’t make an educated decision about the long-term care of your loved one unless you have ALL the facts.

What are ALL the possible future care outcomes given his/her current condition?
What are our options for long-term care?
What impairments do we need to consider post-ICU?

Questions To Ask When Your Family Member Is Hospitalized

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