On my gerontology placement I had taken over the care of an elderly man who had fallen in the bathroom of his home and sustained a serious head injury approximately 2 weeks prior to me seeing him. He had had an evacuation of a large subdural haematoma, and presented with mild weakness of his left side, as well as mild sensory deficits. Personality wise he was a lovely gentle man, but had a tendency to be a perfectionist in his movement and very focussed on the little, relatively unimportant things (very pernickety) and extremely hard on himself and saying how hopeless he was (extremely self deprecating). After speaking to his wife, I discovered that he has always been like this and had a hard upbringing which made him feel as if he wasn’t good enough at anything. This saddened me greatly, as I felt his progress was coming along in leaps and bounds, and I realised that I had to make sure that he knew it.
So, with each session I praised him whenever he was completing an exercise correctly or if I had seen an improvement from the previous session. If he wasn’t performing it correctly, I encouraged him to look at what he was doing and asked if it felt right to him. I thought if I approached it this way he would learn to self critique and use internal feedback instead of me correcting him, and possibly feeding his lack of confidence. On my last day, he told me that finally he felt like he was doing well and he felt more confident. I felt very proud that day.
Anyone else had a patient like this gentleman?
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1 comment:
I think you dealt with the situation really well. You were able to assess the situation and the patients thoughts and feelings and come up with strategies to prevent his harsh self critical tendencies i.e. positive reinforcement and self critique. Nice 1 :)
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