Oh NO don't lose it!

Whilst on neuro placement I was treating a patient who is severly receptively and expressively dysphasic. After liaison with my supervisor we decided that attending a speech therapy session would help me obtain an idea of his level of understanding and to help me to be able to communicate with the patient and make some sense of his disorganised speech. The other student on the placement with me decided that although she wasn't treating a dysphasic patient, it would be a great experience to attend a speech therapy session. We contacted the speech therapist and organised to attend a session.

During the session the speech therapist was attempting to teach the patient to pronouce and recognise some relevant pictures and words. She initially allowed the patient to look at the picture and corresponding word, then asksed what the picture/word was. If the patient was unsure she then put the word in context to try to get him to guess the word. If this didn't work she said the first sound of the word and if they still didn't get it, the whole word and then got the patient to repeat the word a number of times.

Previously during treatment sessions the patient tended to talk to me about what we were doing, usually not making any logical sense but I was able to understand eventually based on his gestures and expression. Therefore I was somewhat accustomed to his dysphasia yet as I had never attended a speech therapy session or asked the patient to specifically verbalise a certain word I was unprepared for what happened.

The speech therapist was trying to get the patient to say something like drive or shower, and the patient was trying his hardest to find the correct word but instead randomly said onions. At this point the student and I were unable to keep our composure as it was just so unexpected and random that we couldn't help but have a chuckle. We felt aweful as the paient was honestly trying and we apologised to the Speech therapist (who had also had a laugh at one point during the session) and to the patient and explained that we had been unprepared. In the future I will compose myself and try to think more from the patient's perspective and thus try to maintain my professionalism.

Now as students and eventually as physiotherapists we always try to have the utmost respect for our patients and AHT as well as protray a professional standard but has anyone been in a position on a prac where they lost it and couldn't help but burst out laughing?