Hey All!
During the last 3 weeks, i've been seeing a patient mainly for chest and occassional SOOB, with 2 assist. During the first 2 weeks of this prac i saw the patient with my superviser, and we did the same thing each day - try to sit the pt out of bed, if unsuccessful then ROM for UL and suctioning.( at this stage i should mention, this is a 60 yr old gentleman, (R) hemi, drowsy, fully dependent with mobility, RIB majority of the time, weak cough, and bad chest).
At the beginning of last week, we had a new physio filling in temporarily for the next month. So now we see this patient together, and few times we've seen this patient in the last week, i've felt we havent done all that we can as physios. Treatment for this patient so far has consisted of SOOB for a few minutes, before we put him back down to rest. Everytime the patient cough, it sounded very moist and in definite need of suction. I've asked/mentioned whether she feels he needs a suction, and eachtime she's like no its sounds dry. Even though i completely disagree, i've just left it, and did as the physio wanted. I know this patient has a bad chest, given his history, ausc findings and cough, so i dont know if i'm jsut getting into a routine of suctioning him, because thats what my superviser did. But at the same time i'm left to wonder if the physio is right when she feels suctioning isnt indicated, because after all she has years of experience working as respiratory physio.
So i'm just a little confused about what i should do. Because when i'm in with the patient, i feel like were not doing enough for him, and beginning to doubt my own judgement, ie. is this cough moist or dry, and at the same time i dont want to create a fuss with the physio, where i feel she might think i'm undermining her experience.
Only 1 more week...
Rev
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1 comment:
Hi Rev
I agree that it can be really hard when different supervisors have different ideas about how a patient is best treated. However, maybe you can see the experience as a positive in that you get to see a different array of treatment decisions and you can make the best judgement from your experiences instead of just becoming a clone of one supervisor and repeating their mistakes. Look on the bright side!
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