Now I know that this topic has been bought up before but it's now three weeks into my musculo outpatients and I'm still struggling to get my assessment and treatment times short.
I had a patient present to the clinic with a supraspinatus tear with secondary impingement. My patient wasn't able to communicate in english very well (as with most of my patients) and also had an extensive past medical history. Throughout the subjective assessment there were a number of occasions where she looked quite upset and on the verge of tears.
My supervisor has been telling me that at this stage of the placement, the subjective and objective should be complete in 15 minutes and that my time management skills are still below par. The subjective with this lady took 40 minutes. Yes she tended to elaborate and get side-tracked quite quickly, but I made sure to bring her back to her presenting problem and at times when she looked like she was going to cry I felt unbelievably rude at having to divert her attention and focus on the assessment. When I went to speak to my supervisor all he did was look at his watch, not a confidence booster at all.
I have been working so hard on my time management with absolutely no improvement. How are you supposed to just cut people off without seeming rude or heartless, whilst trying to build some sort of rapport with your patients at the same time? Is just an experience thing?
Fan
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
1 comment:
Hi Fan & all,
Obtaining a balance between the time you spend both assessing and treating a patient and building a rapport with them does come with experience - so don't be too hard on yourself/ves.
Fan - I think this particular patient you have talked about in your blog is an exceptionally difficult one to deal with, given her extensive PMH and difficulty in speaking English.
I really commend your compassion (all of you in this forum) in dealing with each patient individually - that will take you all a long way.
Trudi
Post a Comment