Last week showed me the importance of prioritising when you have a ward full of patients. When the physiotherapist on an opposite ward called in sick, we (the students) were brought in to take care of the patients on the ward which demonstrated the need to know what to look out for when prioritising your patient list for the day. With a basic handover, it was then a matter of looking through the files of the new patients to see whether or not they had to be seen; then rank the patients in case the load couldn’t be completely addressed during that one day.
Although this is a problem that we are taught about, its not really until we are faced with having to treat many patients that we can truly understand how to multi task. As my supervisor said “later never comes,” so if there is something that needs to be done on a ward you should never procrastinate otherwise you’ll never get back to do it. Being made to make the choices as to who needs to be seen was quite eye-opening especially as we would be expected to do this once we start working without too much previous experience. Despite being given a patient load during our placements, we aren’t given the ability to make the choices as to who should be seen and why.
This was an unexpected opportunity to put to practice our ability to speed-read patients files (and gain important information) and also justify why or why you weren’t going to see the patients. It is a skill that we all require but don’t get much of an opportunity to practice until we’re out in the workforce.
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3 comments:
I agree that this is a skill that takes a bit of practice to perfect and fortunately the supervisor on my current placement is keen to help us develop it. Each morning we are tasked with looking through the ward list and deciding which patients need to be seen for the day and which ones are independent with their chest care and mobility. Then we decided between us who is going to see who. I am thankful that we were given the opportunity to develop this skill now rather than jumping in at the deep end as a new graduate.
I think this is an important skill that should be practiced on all clinical placements. My supervisor also decided that on my last week I would be responsible for prioritising patient treatment and for dividing who will see which patients. She said that she found this was one of the hardest things to get her around as a new graduate, as she was running a whole ward on her own. This also allows a sense of responsibility on our behalf, as well as confidence that we will be able to handle the same situation when we graduate
its not really something that can be taught and i'm sure that by being thrown into that situation you'll be more confident in your judgements for next time! Hopefully its an experience that we can all have before we graduate. It works in the outpatient setting as well... deciding how many patients to book in and deciding whether there will be sufficient time to see them
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