I've just finished a ortho inpatients prac where I was able to treat patients from teenagers topatients well into there 90's. One particular patient became very frustrating to deal with and i just about lost it.
He was a 17 year old male, just about to graduate from high school and he broke his hip whilst skateboarding. He spent a week on the wards just so the swelling could go down around hip so they could operate. Whilst being in hospital, year 12 finished for him and he missed his graduation. The operation finally came and went and he was eventually told to weight bear through his injured hip. Knowing he needed to ambulate with crutches on the stairs, he kept pushing my supervisor and my self to do it, despite almost falling numerous times ambulating on the wards with crutches. After telling him he had to stay in hospital for one more day. Out came the tears, swear words etc - venting his frustration at staff.
I could see his point of view, the last thing you want to be doing for graduation is sitting in hospital but her his own safety and well being, one more night was needed. The next day he was eventually discharged home. Hopefully the extra night in hospital prevented him from having another fall and ending up back in hospital. I actually used the strategy of telling the patient that some one on the ward had discharged themselves 2 weeks ago against medical advice and she came back re dislocating her hip after having a fall cause she was unstable on crutches - despite this never happening. The pateint did quiet down a little eventually seeing that we were keeping him overnight for his own interests. If this situation was to present itself again, I may use the same strategy, only if all other avenues had been used up.
Has anyone had to handle a frustraing patient like this?
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i think by seeing things from his point of view and not just yours helped to get your point across about how important it was for him to stay in hospital that one night more. what i sometimes forget and found out with one of my patients who had # hip and was struggling with crutches is that patients can discharge themselves against medical advice so its really important to stress the maiin safety points daily to the patient so if they do go home early they have the basic rules to help them along. its good that you got the patient on side and he stayed that extra night, unfortunately with my patient he'd had enough with hospitals and just wanted to go home and noone could persuade him differently.
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