I went to treat a patient in her hospital room last week with the aim of taking her for a walk to the hysio gym on the ward, performing some balance assessment exercises and treatments and then walking back to her room.
On arrival at her room she appeared not to recognise me, from the previous day, at first, but then when i reminded her she said she remembered me fine.
So off we started on a walk and halfway out the door a nurse passed us and my patient said "wow she's huge! I can't believe how fat some of these nurses are here..." etc. But the nurse wasn't close enough to hear so i kind of just ignored it and we kept walking. We completed what we needed to do in the Physio gym and were returning to her room. We entered her doorway and the OT was treating the patient who shares the room with her. As we walked in she said "see like that one, look at her (word for backside), she'd be a good 15 stone...etc." However the OT was well within hearing distance this time. I almost instinctively shot her a look to display the message of "shhhhh" but i don't think she understood/picked up that anything was wrong and just continued on.
This whole situation made me feel awful. I felt terrible that she was saying these things about the OT, who i spend a lot of time with but not enough for her to laugh about it with me afterwards.
It made me think afterwards that perhaps i should have picked up on it earlier because of what she said on the way out to the physio room and perhaps i should have had some diversion conversation ideas up my sleeve to dtsract the patient.
I haven't had much experience with dementia patient's previously but once i documented her inappropriate comments in the notes it arose that the patient is actually displaying these behaviours regularly.
If the same or similar situation occurs again i will make sure i have something interesting to say to draw her away from focussing on one particular (sometimes touchy) subject.
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Erin i think your too nice of a person haha. From being in gero's the last 4 weeks if theres one thing allied health staff dont take too much notice of its comments from pt's with dementia. Even though its not as potentially personal, pt's have told me aggressively to 'go away' or that im a bully, even if im not treating them! I was with a pt this week that told the nurse she hated her and didnt want her or her cream (pt has sores all over her body) anywhere near her. The nurse took it in stride haha.
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