Hello all,
Onto my next placement, which is both challenging and interesting. I'm learning so much which is fantastic.
This week I would like to share another 'communication' situtation. The current placement I am on is involved in a comprehensive study to do with stroke, stroke rehabilitation and stroke prevention. The inclusion criteria is very specific and in order to recruit patients it must be done immediately following the incident. A large number of the patients are unable to sign for consent due to there stroke hence it is up to family members to do so for them. Unfortunately, under some instances the patients do pass away before the signature has been obtained. The other day I was able to observe my supervisors fantastic communication skills, with a patients family whose husband had unfortunately passed away before the signature was obtained.
It is a a challenging process. My supervisor had to show compassion and understanding, at the same time trying to obtain a consent signature. In this instance she needed good listening skills and effective communication to help the family through this tough period but also get the signature.
She did a great job. A lot of it inovolves listening. Family members love to release their emotions and ask a lot of questions. It is a very time consuming process. My supervisor, spent a great deal of time with this family. The family greatly appreciated this and once the purposes of the study were explained to the patient, in terms of benefits the family was more than happy to sign.
This was a great experience to observe and learn from.
From this situation I have learnt that when we graduate we are not only going to have to be great physio's but also great listeners and definitely communicators.
Hope everyone's placements are going well.
Heidi.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
3 comments:
Hi Heidi... it's good to hear your prac is going well and you're really enjoying it. I'm doing my neuro placement now and really enjoying it as well.
On to the topic of communication, I have also realized how important it is as a physiotherapist to have effective communication skills. I have always been told that I have excellent communication and people skill, which I always passed off as a bit of a cop out comment. I just assumed that communication and people skills are easy, it's not important or special to be able to communicate well with others. As these pracs progress I am realizing how important communication is and that not everyone does posses this skill. I'm also realizing how much more my skill have to develop, being able to alter my communication and adjust it to suit all different types of patients...I'm sure you've noticed a huge difference in your communication between the patients you treated in cardio, musculo, and neuro. It's great to realize that there is yet another things to work on and develop in order to be a great physio...what did I get myself into?!?!?!
Hi! I agree with Leslie in that the good communication skills has always felt like a cop out from your tutors, but doing my neuro placement has made me realise how important it actually is.
I guess these skills are something that will over time, become natural, but when your first exposed to somehting new you think...now where do I go from here??? Seeing your supervisor communicate like that showing commpassion, active listening is a great opportunity and makes you realise how hard you need to work to get to that level - clinical exposure, so they keep telling us, is probably the most important thing right now in terms of developing as a physio and being respected by other staff, patients and the patient's family. At least you have that experience of seeing your supervisor communicate like that so you have some sort of bench mark.
Arrggh - So much to learn...we'll be as good as that one day!
Fan
Great point Heids!
I definitely agree that communication is the key compontent to any treatment session. I found on musculo prac that if you liten and talk through your patient's problems, you've won half the battle. People will be happy with the session if you can obtain a good professional rapport with them even though you haven't solved all of their problems.
Secondly, on my cardio placement, one of my patients in HDU can open his eyes to verbal command but is unable to do much else. I have worked out that he can hear me though, when I am doing TEE's with shakes/vibes, I talk to the patient and asak him to take in a deep breath. Obviously the ventilator is doing most of the work, but I have found that there is a larger inspiratory volume and effeort if I ask the patient to help me out.
Hope prac is going well
Post a Comment