This blog concerns my gerontology placement. A patient had come in one afternoon (suffering from a UTI) and I was to see her with my Curtin Clinical Tutor. The patient was from a high level care nursing home. According to the notes the patient ambulated with a WZF. Fine! When the tutor and I went into her room she had nurses working with her and we probably wouldn’t be able to see her today. Ok, I could do my mobility assessment tomorrow I thought, no dramas.
My tutor suggested I ring the nursing home just to clarify some of the information from the admission notes regarding the patient’s current ambulatory status. I obliged but thought why was I doing this. I put it down to the fact she just wanted to hear me communicate to another health care professional over the phone.
I called the nursing home and spoke to a physio there. She explained to me that this patient does not ambulate at all! She gets around in a wheelchair. I told her about the admission form we had. What had happened it was explained to me was this lady in her confusion had got up from her wheel chair in the dining room grabbed someone’s WZF and proceeded to walk with it. Interesting I thought.
I got off the phone and relayed this to my tutor and a nurse who was aware of us following this up. I guess I was the most surprised that that could happen. A valuable lesson was learnt and I know if I ever have any doubts about some information I read regarding a patient I will follow it up. Or if it concerns our job such as mobility status then it doesn’t hurt to clarify a few things!
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