This happened sometime ago now.
Patient who had recently had a fall, as a result fractured his tibial shaft. He had an ORIF and the fracture was stabilised and was able to weightbear. He had been ambulating with a pulpit frame on a couple of occasion with 2xassist and managed about 5m with the ward physio. The patient normally uses a wheelchair and uses a zimmer frame for transfers. My supervisor had told me to go see this man and get him to ambulate about 5m. So i got everything ready; a pulpit frame and a nurse to help. We managed to get him into standing without any hassels and onto the pulpit frame. He walked a few steps and was doing really well. My supervisor walks past and stops and asks the patient to be seated. She then waved me over away from the patient and told me that the patient was 110kg and the weight limit on the pulpit frame is 100kg!! We eventually got a pulpit frame that had a higher limit and the patient managed fine.
Looking back at it, if something happened, it could of been really nasty. Pulpit frame breaking and as a result, patient falling and possibly other fractures. Then the patient would lose confidence in himself and in the physio. There are so many things that could happen. Luckily, it did, phew.
The thing is, weight limit on a pulpit frame didn't ever cross my mind and i wasn't aware there were other frames that took more weight than others. I did realise the patient was heavy.
There is only one solution to this. Next time check the weight limits of equipment (not just pulpit frames, but tilt tables, zimmer frames ...etc) and have a good idea of what your patient weighs, normally in the obs chart or notes. Now that this has happened, its a quick check i would with all my patients.
2 comments:
Yeah that would have been quite the sticky situation. I also didnt realise they had wt limits, and i thought if they did they would be large enough to support all pt's we would come across. It also would have been completely the physio's fault as the equipment could not be blamed which would make the situation even worse. Learning from a potential disaster is much better than a real one. Thanks for the heads up, Im sure most of 4th yrs/new grads would be in the same boat.
i agree that it is easy to missjudge things like this but i guess with time and practice all of this would come naturally. Making mistakes is all part and parcel of learning.
I wouldn't take it as a negative thing 4th yr is all about learning and i'm sure you will now be more careful.
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