Zak’s back……..Well my latest little source of reflection is trying to think of ways to improve my liaising with the nursing staff on my ward. Now, having done a nursing degree and then our other physio pracs I have never ever had any problems with nursing staff or building a good rapport and working relationship. However, this prac is proving to be slightly challenging in this department, not that they are not nice people because I’m sure they are but it seems that they see physio as one big inconvenience to their schedules. Now I understand our ward is particularly heavy with most patients requiring full assistance with their ADL’s which therefore requires a lot of time and effort from the nursing staff. To try to enable things to run smoothly there is a system in place where we write up on the board physio times for our patients and then also in the ward diary, as well as checking this is ok with the patient’s individual nurse…….a process which is quite arduous but supposedly time saving and effective. I have one patient with one of my colleagues who is particularly heavy and often reluctant for physio so she requires a good amount of time to have an effective treatment session. Every morning this week we have gone through the above process, even putting it in the diary the day before so there’s plenty of notice but each day she has still been in bed when we have gone to collect her for physio. My frustration factor was off the richter scale one day, just because we had made every effort to even help the nursing staff get her ready but it just seemed like there was very little appreciation of these people’s need for physio……..even though, apart from their general care, is the best thing for them and the only thing that’s going to possibly get them better and back to as functional a life as possible!!!