Every now and then there will be a patient whose situation completely
floors me and makes my heart break. Every time it happens, it makes it
incredibly hard to keep motivated to do my job. I now understand why
nurses tend to get burned out so quickly, because it's a hard thing to
deal with when it does occur.
We received a phone call from the
emergency department. They were sending up a patient who was admitted
with seizure disorder. After they finished telling us all his history
and were about to hang up they informed us that he was in four point
restraints because he had been a little out of control and attempting to
hit staff and escape from the hospital. This sounded like it was going
to be a fun night.
The patient arrived onto the floor, and
instantly we knew we were in trouble. The patient was a young man who
didn't speak a word of English, instead he spoke Spanish. He had no
family or friends with him. He was in restraints holding his arms and
legs down for his and our safety.
As I was reading through his
documents I found out some interesting social history. He came from a
family of six children. His father was working in two counties over and
sending money home to help. His mom was extremely sick and unable to
care for the children. His older sibling had died, a year ago, from a
seizure. Because the death happened in a hotel, the cops were called in
and the family were illegal immigrants so they had to go on the run not
only from the police but also from child protective services. The next
older sibling became the caregiver for the four younger children. The
patient not only had a seizure disorder, but when he was little it was
also discovered that he was always going to have the simple mentality of
a 12 yr old. His younger siblings were worse off with severe mental
and physical disabilities. None of the siblings were able to speak any
English.
This was not the surprising facts that I found. This
patient was well known at the hospital. Apparently this was a frequent
flyer who was admitted every couple of months. The sister who was in
charge of making sure he takes his medication would take him off his
medication so he would have a seizure and be admitted to the hospital
for a few days rest. It was a rough discovery.
Anyway when we
went into access the patient we discovered he had chewn through all four
of his restraints. As we attempted to replace them one at a time, he
became very aggressive. It took four techs, two nurses, and two
security guards to hold him down while we placed one wrist back into the
restraint. It was crazy.
Throughout the night he managed to
chew through six pairs of restraints and had to be wrestled back into
new ones every time. It made for a very long night.
The next
night when I returned to work, the day nurse told me it was like caring
for a completely different patient. He was out of restraints and
behaving. When I went into take his medication and began to talk to him
in Spanish, he was laughing at my pronunciation. In actuality, it was
as if I was caring for a goofy 12 year old patient instead of a 18 year
old young man. The night went well and he was very engaging and cute.
Overall the patient was one I may never forget, but that's a good thing. And I am sure my college Spanish teacher will be thrilled that in
reality while I was able to communicate fairly well with the , patient
the only words I am absolutely certain I understand in Spanish are all the curse words. ;)
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