Today was rather an exciting experience as i embarked on a my 5 week long journey of discovery and enlightenment.
The staff and residents at UCH are sooo friendly and everyone knows everyone! We stopped many a times to chat to gardeners, maintence men and residents of which our supervisor (April) knew by name! This amazed me and boy i hope there is no spot quiz on that tomorrow! (There were one too many jokes of that being the case.)
One thing I would like to share with u today, my dedicated reader, is a case about a resident I helped exercise. This 85 y/o male was a lovely fellow who was suffering from T2DM and had significant sensory loss in his lower left leg. This impairment mainly impacted his static & dynamic balance. But his main impairment was his posture while ambulating. As he was using a WZF, his posture had become quite flexed at the hips.
1) Tim and I were able to diagnose this patient by asking questions while observing his old exercise programme. We then reported to April what we thought was wrong and what we should/would work on if making up an exercise programme. We established that there was significant extensor muscle weakness/flexor tightness and this is what i planned my Rx on. So in addtion to April's adduction/abduction X's, stepping X's and laying flat on his back to stretch his flexors, i introduced this patient to squeezing a ball while in side lying (3 sets of 5, holding for 10 seconds) to work on his gluteal strength and also stretching his abductors and flexors in sidelying. The patient reported a positive reaction to the Rx initially but i'll be waiting to see what he reports back tomorrow morning!(ouch)
2a) I believe i built up a good rapport with this gentleman as he himself was awfully friendly and loved a good chat! On the plus side he also was very good at following instructions and didn't mind doing anything I asked him to do. b) I possibly should have considered my X's a little better as i may have done to much for someone of his age as he would never say no and never reported any pain when now i think about it he probably was being too much of a man about it. c) i suspect tomorrow he will be in a bit of pain because even when i do those x's myself the next day i pull up a bit rough! so tomorrow i think we'll take it a tad easier and i'll monitor other things (fascial expressions) as well next time. d) I actually felt really confident while looking after this patient today due to previous experience in 4P and our gero pracs from this semester.
3) covered above.
4) I'm feeling very comfortable in this facility so far. I'm pretty happy about having Tim there with me as well to bounce ideas off and share client experiences with. Even though today was mostly an orientation I was pleased that we were able to help out in both low/high care exercise classes, ambulating residents (one lady was 99yrs old turning 100 next month!) and help Rx the outpatients.
5)REMEMBER THEY ARN'T SPRING CHICKENS! and need to have appropriate X's set out for their age!
6) In UCH they use a different manutention style which involes no lifting! I've been given a booklet to read up on it tonight!
Well my very dedicated readers i have a lot to read tonight so i'll catchya on the flip side tomorrow!
xoxo dori
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