Pts that have given up!

I have just finished my prac on a resp ward at a major hospital and in my last week working on this ward I got allocated a new pt who came in with an exacerbation of his COPD. On initial assessment I found that his chest problem wasnt actually too bad and was going to be managed quite quickly with various meds and his exacerbation would be resolved. On examination of his social history I found out that he lives with his wife who is his main carer and that he has been wheelchair bound for that past 3 years. He needs assistance from his wife or silverchain which he gets 5x/week to transfer between chairs, beds and toilets. 2/52 prior to admission the pt had a fall and suffered a fracture of one of the bones in his foot and so his foot was in a PofP. I might also mention that he is an older Italian man with a very stroong accent so communicating with him isnt the easiest.

So after the first few sessions of treating his chest it began to clear up and was no longer a problem so the priorities from a PT point of view was to ensure he was back to his pre-admission mobility levels, which involved practicing transfers to/from chairs/beds and toilets. So practicing these trasnfers involved assisting sit-stand and then stand by assist with him using a 4WW then small steps around so that he rotated 90degrees so he was in line with the wheelchair. The fact that he is deconditioned along with his fractured foot makes this transfer quite a difficult task for him.

After practicing 3 transfers he began to get a little tired and upon sitting down he started venting to me that the best thing for him was
"for the doctors to give him a needle full of something that would make him never wake up" and saying " I wish I had a gun to I could kill myself".

So as he was saying comments like this and saying how he was pointless and just a hassle to his wife and he was better off dead I kind of got stuck for words as I didn't know how to reply. So I kind of said things along the line of how he was wrong and that he could improve and still had a point in life and how his wife would never want him to die. But the fact that this man is Italian and communicating was so difficult it was hard for him to actually understand what I was saying and so it didn't really come across that well.

I'm sure that this happens quite often in hospital with pts with chronic conditions and simply want to be dead than for their life to drag out. SO I was wondering if anyone else has experienced this sort of situation and how they handled it and what sort of things they said to the patient.