Hi all. Hope everyone enjoyed their holidays. It is weird to not see all of you every day :)
I'm doing Neuro Outpatients at Shenton Park. So far it is really good. It is a student run clinic and we each have a list of patients that we have taken over from the last set of students in December.
So far everything is running smoothly. My most challenging aspect so far is dealing with a patient that speaks virtually no english. She is a left hemi that needs both gait retraining and upper limb function retraining. I find that I have to use my hands more than my mouth and I need to have very concise instructions, if any (if you know me then you know that it is really hard for me not to be chatty). The hardest part is giving her a HEP because I cannot seem to get her to understand what I want her to do and how many times. I can get her to do what I want if I guide her, but not by herself. She is content to let me move her appendages, but cannot repeat the actions on her own. I finally got her to lift her toes for IC, but not she is almost lunging instead of striding. Any thoughts?
1 comment:
Hey KP,
I too found difficulty in dealing with patients where English is not their first language. I have only had one instance thus far in my neuro placement but often battled this in my musculo outpatients at Armadale. This made it difficult to meet the requirements for a timely history taking/assessment/treatment! As a mater of fact, one patient came back describing an exercise he was doing which I didn’t prescribe but used as an assessment tool! This is where pictures (written handouts) and demos (my acting career may just be blossoming) came in handy. I know drawing may be time consuming, but really no more than asking the same question 3+ times in 3 different ways and never getting a strait answer. There is always the option of requesting an interpreter but again, you run into a time constraint and the trouble of setting it up. I guess this communication/description thing is a learned skill!
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