I've just been on my rural prac at a private practice. When working at a private practice in the country you never know what kinds of patients are going to walk through the door and you have to be prepared for anything. You also have to be prepared to know when you can not help the patient and need to refer them onto other health care professionals.
A patient came to the practice complaining of left hip pain and lower back pain. This patient was known to the physiotherapist and has a history of intravenous drug use. When assessing the patient her presentation didn't quite add up and she was in allot of pain. As a student physiotherapist I would have kept trying to assess and treat her, but my supervising physio decided to refer her to a doctor. The next morning she was rushed to the hospital in extreme pain and was diagnosed with an infection in her hip joint. After she was admitted into hospital we had no further contact with the patient.
Experience would play a huge role in deciding whether a patient needs to be referred onto another health professional. This case has really helped me understand what all our lectures mean when they say when the "presentation doesn't add up". In this case the presentation didn't add up and it was essential that we referred her onto see the doctor.
I feel that this experienced has helped gain essential knowledge to help me make these difficult decisions in the future.
Subscribe to:
Post Comments (Atom)
2 comments:
I also wonder about this quite often because as a student you don't want to be responsible for a patient becoming seriously ill. Therefore I guess we should act conservatively and refer patients if their symptoms 'don't add up.' In saying that, you don't want to look like a 'dumb student' for referring a patient who may in fact have a simple problem in which physio treatment is indicated. Its a hard situation to be in so I think we should always check with someone who has more experience until we are confident in our own ability to detect such issues.
I agree with Adam. As students we are not expected to have to make those sort of decisions on our own! So i believe if you are querying whether or not to refer on then simply give your supervisor a quick rundown of the pts presentation, reasons why/why not you think they should be refered and then hoepfully the supervisor should help you to come to a conclusion.
Post a Comment