Hi guys. Only one week to go! I am completing my cardio placement on the medical respiratory ward of a major Perth hospital, and was in an interesting situation earlier this week.
I am currently treating a lovely 67 year old lady who was admitted with an infective exacerbation of bronchiectasis. I had been progressing my patient’s mobility through walking sessions twice daily, and Tuesday morning’s session was no different. My patient wanted to walk to the hospital’s news agency to buy some magazines, so we turned this into a treatment session. The ward was on level 5, and we needed to get to the ground floor, so we headed for the lifts. As we entered the lift, the doors snapped shut, and cut my patient’s arm. Unfortunately, the door hit directly over a bruise on the patients arm, so there was a substantial amount of blood. I had some tissues on me, so I immediately applied pressure over the area, and we slowly walked back to the ward. I made the nurses aware of this and they dressed the wound appropriately. I filled out an incident report form and made my supervisor aware of the situation. I felt bad for my patient, so in my lunch break I went down to the news agency and bought her the magazine she was after.
Looking back, I should have held the doors open before my patient entered the lift, but I guess I just did not expect then to suddenly close on us. So that’s the advice I give to you. Good luck
1 comment:
Thanks for the advice Steve. I'm sure I'll think about that the next time I'm getting into a lift with a patient. Did you encounter any issues with the staff due to the incident?
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