Burns patient

Hi everyone,

I had a patient today that i saw with my supervisor. He is an adolescent with four kids. At the end of the assessment and treatment, my supervisor said that he may need to be seen again in the arvo. I said - okay and offered to give the pt a handout for his exercises that I said I will prepare.

But the supervisor also told me to re-inforce and push him a bit harder because he had complained of a lot of pain and the 'adolescent' does not know what pain is and is likely to keep complaining and prolong his hospital stay. I understood what my supervisor was saying to me regarding this man.

So I went in the afternoon and explained what I was going to do. There were 3 ladies in the room (family members). The patient said he was in some pain and that he has been moving and can move it a little bit. So I got everything ready and got the dressings down to help with the exercises. The patient was compliant with the first 1-2 hand exercises after which he complained of increase in the pain. I said it's okay to feel the pain because he's just had his debridement and that the movement will lower it down. Otherwise there is a risk of having it get stiff (since hand is notorious for that). I knew that the patient had his panadol 30 mins ago.

But the patient seemed to be getting extremely agitated. What made it worse was the comments such as "You are making it worse" by the patient's family -even after I explained what I was going to do.

This created a very awkward situation for me. So I said to the patient - I will see what I could do. So I went to see the nurse and said if there could be a pain killer that could be arranged. The nurse said that she had already given the patient the pain killer. I said to her that the patient complained of pain that was 8/10.