I was treating a pt with GB, and we were doing passive movements for all joints as he could only pump his ankles and we were also there with the speech therapist during the decuffing of the trache for any chest treatment that needed to be done. This pts wife was around for most of the day and was very anxious for a lot of the time. This pt had a few complications and didn’t tolerate the decuffing process very well. When his wife was around during decuffing times and physio treatment times she would constantly try to get us to stop what we were doing as she felt her husband couldn’t handle it and that we were hurting him. We explained to her our reasons for doing what we were doing and the importance of it but she still kept on with the comments and it wasn’t only to us students it was also to the speech therapist and one of the ward physios. The pt knew that what we were doing was only to benefit him in the long run so although our passive movements may have been uncomfortable at times he wanted us to continue even when his wife was trying to get us to stop. The wife was hard to handle and only had bad things to say about the staff. On my second last day of the placement this pt developed a PE in his (R) lung and pneumothorax with possibly pneumonia in the (L) lung so he wasn’t doing too well. I was asked to go in to treat him to do some chest treatment and possibly some passive movements. I walked into the room and before I could even speak to the pt his wife told me to leave him today that he couldn’t handle physio today. I went to the pt and asked him what he’d like me to do, if he just wanted me to do passive movements for his legs or arms or just a chest treatment. He asked me to just do some passive movements for his hands and wrists and leave the rest as he was exhausted. So that’s what I did as well as some suctioning as required and some DBE’s.
From dealing with this pts wife I learnt to just sort of ignore her comments and just go with what the pt wanted and needed. We also tried to educate her as to why we were doing what we were doing but this didn’t seem to change her behaviour so we just had to get on with what we were doing while monitoring the pts symptoms and responses. As this pt was on a trache the whole time we were on our placement and therefore non-verbal it also really tuned me into watching for facial expressions to monitor how he was going and tolerating the movements.
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2 comments:
It can be really difficult dealing with patients family when they dont understand the reasons behind what we are doing, they just see the patient in pain or uncomfortable and think what we are doing must be bad. In the end it is the patient's decision not the family members so all we can do is try to educate the family memeber and continue with our treatment as we know it is beneficial.
sometimes its easier to treat patients when the family isn't around because there are less distractions and you don't need to deal with unfavourable comments if they have any.
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