I was assisting the phsyiotherapist on my neuro placement to transfer a non weight bearing patient with Rhabdomyolisis into his wheelchair via an angel transfer. The wheel chair was a tilt in space chair which had a high seat and inorder to complete the transfer the bed had to be raised so that the slide board could be placed across the bed and wheelchair. The physiotherapist instructed me to place the patients feet on the foot plates of the wheelchair so that we could beging the transfer.
I was not happy with this arrangement as the patients feet would then be on an unstable surface as we transferred them. I then asked the physiotherapist if they were sure that I should place the patients feet on the footplates. He reassured me that this was fine. I was still not happy but decided that the physiotherapist had more experience than I did and knew what he was doing and decided to carry on with the transfer.
My instincts turned out to be correct and as we began to transfer the patient his feet slipped off the foot plates and he fell. Luckily we managed to break his fall and he was not injured but this experience left the patient feeling very anxious and nervous about transferring and his recovery!
From this experience I have learned that your instincts are extremely important and you should follow them. We have learnt how to complete activites such as patient transfers safely at uni for a reason and even if you feel a physiotherapist has more experience than you it is more than alright to reason your thoughts with them. It is alright to stop and question what you are doing or about to do as many times as you need. The patient's safety is of utmost importance in situations like these!!
3 comments:
I agree. It's so hard sometimes as a student when you just know something isn't right. I guess maybe in the back of our mind we're worried that we're wrong so we don't speak up. We do have the skills and the most recent knowledge from uni to know when something is wrong, so there isn't really any excuse why we shouldn't speak up and perhaps prevent an incident from happening
It is definitely alright to question something you do not feel comfortable performing. In so many situations it comes down to communication, which becomes easier as your confidence in your abilities increases.
I'm sure that now you've been put into this situation, you will feel more confident in speaking up and questioning situations in the future. If you have sufficient evidence to justify a different approach or question an aspect of their approach, there should be no reason why interupting should be frowned upon. They might just be using an easier and equally safe approach that we could learn for future.
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