‘Fall’
This is a scary word in the physio world and none of us want to have a patient fall while they are being treated by us. Most especially us students. We go to great lengths, or we should, to prepare our treatment sessions to ensure the utmost safety of our patients! Unfortunately we are bound to have several occasions over our careers where a patient, slips, trips or collapses on us and they have a fall. Sometimes this is due to unavoidable causes and sometimes it is due to a lack of planning or forethought. I have luckily not experienced this but have known of other students and physios who have had ‘falls’ or near falls throughout my placements.
Most institutions have a whole lot of paperwork that needs to be filled out following a fall and everyone makes such a big deal about this. I think that it is an excellent method of getting people to think about how the situation could have been avoided. To know what you could have done better or differently if it was due to something you did, or how to adapt the environment or equipment used to prevent the same thing from happening again. So try not to think of the paperwork as a bad thing but think of it as a method in which to improve your skills as a physio and how to make a safer environment for your patients!!
2 comments:
As scary as the concept is, in some cases the situation could just not have been avoided. We as PTs just have to be confident in our decisions and ensure its as safe as POSSIBLE. i would hope that if the situation was unforseen and all safety precautions were undertaken then there would be no negative repercussions on us as PT's.
I agree, as long as we take every precaution to make our treatments as safe as they can be, we will have less guilt if anything does occur. I myself have had a patient fall during my session before, and I was right next to them and it was very safe.. i caught them, however we still both went to the floor. Even if you take precautions there is still the chance something could happen!
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