Hi everyone,
Here’s an interesting scenario…This morning as I am just about to see my third patient I receive an urgent page “please call transit lounge RE: EMERGENCY mobility assessment, falls risk patient”. I think to myself, this is a little strange; I haven’t been called to the ‘transit lounge’ to do a mobility assessment before.
For those of you who are unaware, the transit lounge is an area in which patient’s that have been discharged, can wait until somebody is available to pick them up. The lounge is designed to free up beds on the ward, allowing new patients move in sooner.
There are certain criteria that a patient must fit before he/she can discharge, one such criteria is that they are safe from a physiotherapy point of view. This was what puzzled me, surely a patient who is a “falls risk” should be seen by physio and Okayed prior to discharge. I rang the nurse in the transit lounge; I asked her why the patient was discharge with PT approval, why I was being asked to assess in the lounge and more importantly what was going to happen if I deemed this patient not safe for discharge??? His bed would have already been taken on the ward; this just really didn’t make any sense!!
So I went down to the transit lounge, supervisor in toe, and we took a look at the patient. Well… he was not safe at all, he was going home to two storey house with his 78 year old wife as his primary and only carer and he was at least twice her size. He had no walking aid and clearly needed one; we fetched a walking stick and gave him rushed lesson on its use. But we didn’t have time/facilities to assess him on stairs (even though his house is 2 stories).
As I left the lounge, I really felt that the hospital system had failed this poor man. I think hospitals have protocols for good reason, something like discharge planning should be done strategically. I think that this man just got rushed through to free up another bed when he really wasn’t ready to be discharged. It placed a lot of stress on my supervisor to have to let this man discharge against her better judgement. I guess the only way to help prevent this sort of thing happening in the future would be ensuring better interdisciplinary communication. Ensuring that everybody is aware of the correct discharge procedures and making sure that they are followed at the correct time. This way if a problem does arise it can be dealt with in a satisfactory manner. Has anyone come across any similar situations???
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1 comment:
Hi Jess, I haven’t come across the situation like that before, but what you have described, shows that someone somewhere not doing their job properly and lack of communication between interdisciplinary teams are putting a bad name to the hospital and more importantly they putting the patient at risk of falling. As we know the cost associated with falls are staggering, thus I do agree that a better interdisciplinary communication, would prevent this form happening.
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