Safety incidence

On my ICU prac, I was involved with an incident where I assisted another physiotherapy student in transferring a cardiac patient from a chair to a bed. He had a tracheostomy in situ and was on CPAP via ventilator. We also had 2 orderly staff and a nurse involved in looking after lines/attachments and assisting us.

During the transfer, every student's nightmare happened... somehow his tracheostomy was pulled out of his neck... so that it was dangling down in front of his chest. When we saw this, we had a few panicky moments where i knew myself and the other student (who were leading the transfer) thought "what do we do?" and I recall the other student saying "we should put it back in" (luckily we never went through with that idea)

The patient (quite comfortably) said "I'm alright!", following which we immediately sprung into action, sitting him down and sending an orderly to get a doctor immediately. The doctor was very pleasant, simply putting a bandage over his bleeding wound where the trachy used to be, and saying "well, you got off the ventilator 1 or 2 weeks early!"

I believe we froze for a few seconds because we were still in that "student" mindset - that the more experienced nurse or orderly staff would solve the problem. Although this situation resolved well, it did remind me to be vigilant and we should have acted and got help immediately, as we were the ones responsible for the situation. Although we were students we were still the ones leading the transfer, and obviously the other staff were waiting for our cues to act.