Hi Guys hope prac is going well.
I am now on my Cardio prac. I have a fairly large mixture of patients (surgical, medical, ICU etc.). The patient I’m going to talk about is a Day 1 surgical patient. He had a reversal of a complex abdominal procedure. He was c/o very high levels of pain and did not want anyone to touch him. My supervisor asked him if it was ok for a student to treat him which he said no to which meant I was in there assisting my supervisor. The pt was very anxious and in pain so the pain team were contacted.
He was gotten out of bed Day 1 and ambulated up and down the hall. Once the patient was up out of bed there was no real mention of pain. He didn’t press his PCA during the walk. He was sat out of bed for a few minutes and then returned to bed. By the end of the session he was extremely grateful that we got him up out of bed and was planning to go for another walk in the afternoon with the nursing staff. His pain dropped significantly from pre treatment to post treatment. While some of it was due to mobilisation the majority was a decrease in anxiety levels. He was so anxious about having to get up out of bed he was increasing his pain levels. What I learnt from this patient is that it is always a good idea to quickly check their level of anxiety. It’s amazing how much anxiety contributes to a patient’s pain levels.
Hope everyone has a good second week.
Anna
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
Hey Anna,
I totally agree with you about the anxiety level. I have found that it is a tough thing to relieve and that we have to be very careful about what we say and how we say it to these patients. Also its too bad that we have to introduce ourselves as students because automatically it increases a patients anxiety about us. The good thing is if we come across as being confident a lot of this anxiety is relieved. Good luck with the rest of your prac.
Shadi
Nice work Anna, to follow on with what Shadi said. I feel that telling the patients that we are students does tend to be detrimental at times as well. It tends to cause a lack of confidence with the patient towards us at times which leads to more anxiety. I have had a patient refuse treatment from me on this recent prac based entirely upon the fact that I am a student.
Post a Comment