Hi guys,
I am working on an acute stroke ward and had a patient who became very sick during Rx. He vomitted on his clothing and self when we were in the physio gym off the ward. We (another student and I) didn't know what to do so I alerted his nurse as to what happened, cleaned him up as well as we could using towels and took him back to his room. His nurse subsequently was upset with us for not getting him into clean clothes. My question is what would be the correct thing to do in this situation? Should we be changing the patient or leaving it to the nurse to do?
Thanks
Brent
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2 comments:
Hi Brent, I am surprised at the nurse’s reaction. As far as I know we are not responsible for a patient’s personal care. You seem to have taken all appropriate actions to look after this patient.
To be picky I can't see cleaning vomit off a patient being in a physios job description. I have helped clean patients up when they have vomited or lost bowel control and I'm pretty sure most Physios do. However personal care is not the role of the Physio it is part of the job of being a nurse.
While I’m not sure whether you had any warning that this patient was unwell it's probably a good idea to have a sick bag on standby just in case - especially in acute patients.
Anna
Hi guys,
I just want to remind you that we are part of a team and have a duty of care for the patient. Therefore the patients personal care is partly our responsibility too. Having said that I don't mean that we should be doing all the patients cleaning all the time but we can't neglect the patient. I think that you took the proper steps. You did not neglect your patient, you cleaned him up as best as you could and alerted the nurse. She has no right being mad at you as you are only asking her to do her part of the team work. If she was extermely busy or there was a crazy situation going on then you should have changed the pt's clothes.
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