One of my patients on my neuro placement was an extremely young patient who had suffered a stroke and required an emergency craniectomy. Because of her young age I expected to meet a patient who had abused her body with drugs and alcohol and who probably wouldn't have much family support in hospital. It was very refreshing to find a very pleasant woman with the support of her husband, mother and sisters from overseas. The support that she had from her family was something that I had not seen on my placement for anyone else on the ward. They were all very caring and trying to help the patient with her recovery.
Unfortunately that love became an unforeseen problem for me with her physio treatment sessions. As they all wanted to help so desperately, they would all want to come to the physio gym and watch her treatment and help out where they could. I was inexperienced enough to allow them to come for the first few sessions and I quickly became aware that although they were only trying to help, they were becoming more of a nuisance then anything during treatment. They were constantly asking questions and trying to help the patient during transfers and telling her to try harder, etc.
It took me a few sessions to realise that this in fact was not helping at all and I had to muster up the courage to ask the family if they could stop coming to the physio gym during her treatments. They actually took it a lot better then I expected and I just tried my hardest to explain to them that the patient would get a better treatment if it wasn't so crowded in the gym. I still allowed the husband to come as the patient seemed to be more comfortable with him around and he was able to get through to the patient better then me in some situations.
This was a steep learning curve for me as I would previously have had no problem at all allowing family and friends to watch our treatment sessions. Now I know for future that it is really not suitable to have more then one extra person involved in a patient's treatment and even then it can be too much sometimes. I think I will allow 1 person to watch and then decide from there if they should stay or not. Has anyone else had any circumstances like this one?
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2 comments:
Adam, I've had a very similar situation to yours and I did the exact same thing. It is hard when the family want to be involved and it hinders your treatment, but in most cases they're very understanding when you ask them to go.
I've also had the same situation, once in a neuro inpatient setting and the other time during outpatient musculoskeletal. I also didn't have the courage to ask the family straight up and did not realise it woyld be a hindrance to the session until further down the track. The first time it happened I was apprehensive about asking the family not to attend but it certainly gets easier as you work out what works and doesn't work for you.
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