Journal

This week on placement I have been at the Royal Victoria Hospital. The hospital is part of the Western General and is dedicated to care of the elderly and an open access service for GP patients and clinics.

I encountered a few challenges throughout the week, these ranged from transferring uncooperative patients and adapting technique to allow for patients conditions. Some patients encountered fear due to suffering pain on movement or weight bearing on fractures. I also encountered many patients with limited or no range of movement. In these instances I had to adapt my technique to obtain the best possible image.

Some patients were a challenge when helping them transfer from their chairs to the table. I found a lot of patients wanted the staff to lift them rather than them transferring themselves on their own.

There was a particular case which I found to be challenging; this involved a patient attending the department from a ward for an ankle x-ray. The patient was brought down to the department in a chair. After confirming all the details I moved the chair to the side of the table. The patient informed me she was frightened to stand, so I advised her to put most of her weight on her good leg while transferring. Getting assistance I assured her we would help her on to her feet and be by her side while transferring her from her chair. On helping her to her feet she seemed to use little effort to support herself making us support most of the weight. After a difficult transfer I then had to try and achieve a good projection. The patient suffered with oedema in her legs and ankles and found it difficult to move them, making positioning difficult.

The AP projection wasn’t too difficult to obtain using the little toe as a marker. However the lateral projection caused a few problems. The patient couldn’t turn onto her side so I then had try and turn her with the use of a pad to hold her in position. It was difficult to see if the patient’s leg was in the correct position due to the swelling but I was able to achieve a good projection.

This entry was posted on Thursday, February 19th, 2009 at 3:29 pm and is filed under Reflectives. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.