Patients who go on and on and on and sing…?

Over most of my placements I have primarily dealt with older patients and I’m sure all of you know… most older patients like having a personal physio student to talk to. Especially in the big hospitals where the nurses, doctors, physios and other health professionals are so busy and only have time to do the required job. On my cardiopulmonary placement this was set to extreme. I had group classes who would primarily talk in the classes rather than do the exercise, single one on one outpatient sessions where they would stop in the middle of a six minute walk test to talk to you and then when I was in the hospital inpatients would jump at the chance to tell you their exciting news that they “opened their bowels finally today” whilst you were trying to get the subjective done. One particular patient loved to tell me about his bowels, his pains, his life stories, his beliefs on God and the general meaning of life. On the first session he complained about all the staff, his breakfast, his lunch and.. that he hadn’t opened his bowels which made him sleep badly. I managed to get a treatment in, in double the usual time. I asked my supervisor what I could do and she told me I had to be firm and realise they don’t get angry if you interrupt them. The next day I was all set to be firm and interrupt and ask closed questions. I managed to get him out of bed, he talked a little bit when walking but up until when I was about to go I was very proud of myself… that was when he started passing on his heartfelt wisdom to me ending in none other than a song. I was literally mortified that the patient was singing for me and just stood there trying to not let my mouth stay open. Afterwards I quickly thanked him and hurried off (having missed morning tea) to the next patient. A few days later I was asked to treat him again and decided I needed to think smart this time. I devised a plan to see all my other patients, write their notes up and then see my singer 15 minutes before lunch. Saw him treated him, took him for his walk and with expert timing got him back to his bed right as his lunch was being served. I said to him he did very well today and deserved a good feed which he sat down, said thanks to me and got stuck into his lunch. Moral of the story, interrupting them and moving on to each task quickly works fine to stop the life stories, however clever timing and food works best. And if you do actually have the time, listen to them as I must say, some of his stories were actually pretty interesting.