Communication

Hey all,
As I near completion of my second week of cardiopulmonary, I have a story for you about a 60 year old widow, who for privacy, we will call Ted.
Ted arrived on my ward seven days ago, having undergone a MVR one day previous. When I first meet Ted he was a quiet, but pleasant man. He was compliant with physio and our session run without hiccup. We built rapport and I even managed to get the occasionally joke out of him. I noticed that, unlike the majority of our patients, he did not receive many (if any) visitors. I felt sorry that Ted had to undergo this major operation on his own; I knew that he had tragically lost his wife a couple of years ago and that they did not have any children. I tried to pop in or give him a wave as passed by, but with a full case load I couldn’t really afford to spend the time just socialising.
Over the next couple of days I noticed a change in Ted’s behaviour, he didn’t seem very keen to ambulate on the ward nor participate in any exercises, he wasn’t making jokes and nursing staff kept saying how grumpy he was.
I knew he was waiting to hear whether or not he would require a pacemaker. For those of you who are unaware, in order for a person to receive a pacemaker they must first be seen by a cardiologist. The cardiologist must come onto the ward and examine the patient. The problem with this is that it may take days for them to be able to get up onto the ward and see the patient. Often patients wait around for days not knowing when they will be seen. As you may imagine this proves very frustrating for a once active person.
After talking with nursing staff and Ted, I discovered there was a bit of a problem with communication Ted was told five days ago that the cardiologist would be into see him that day, when the specialist did not arrive he was simply told, she’ll be in tomorrow. This cycle continued for the next five days and still today he has not been seen. When I found out this information I spoke to the nursing staff, they said that don’t have control over when the specialists come up and they are told one thing and then something changes and they don’t arrive. I discussed with them that this was distressing Ted, as an elderly single man he likes structure and to know what is going on and when. We decided to go and have a chat with Ted to try and relieve any concerns or frustrations he was having. Once we explained that we really couldn’t be sure when the cardiologist would arrive and that he wasn’t going to be forgotten he seemed to be a little relieved. He also commented that he felt like certain medical staff only ever spoke over him and amongst themselves, he referred to them as the ‘secret society’. We said we would try and find out what was going on and relay the information to him. It was also obvious that part of his hostility was due to the fact that he was just plain bored. I decided to take him down to the gym and get him exercising on the bike and doing some other different exercises just to mix it up a little. He responded well to this, I think the fact that he now felt like we were actually talking to him and were honest about the cardiologist made him feel more at ease and willing to comply with treatment.