Tuesday, June 24, 2008
safety issues during assessment
At my recent prac I had an in-depth conversation with a supervisor about safety issues arising during assessment that we didn’t quite see eye to eye about. This issue was whether or not you needed someone standing behind a child when they are attempting to kick a ball that is rolled to them. This supervisor felt that there should always be a person behind every child just in case they miss time the kick, stand on the ball and fall backwards. I can see that this could possibly occur but would it really happen enough to warrant there having to be someone behind at all times? There are a number of other assessment tasks during which patients could possibly fall backwards including hopping, walking backwards and using the space hoppers but we rarely stand close by during these tasks. I felt that it would really depend on the skill levels of the child and you could gauge their need for supervision based on your assessment findings so far but using this method the supervisor was jumping with patients that I did not deem necessary. I guess it is better to be safe than sorry but you can also be over cautious also. In the end I followed the supervisors wishes and had each child supervised but I was still unconvinced. Any suggestions/comments?
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2 comments:
Yes, you are right. Sometimes it's confusing regarding safety issue.
In my last placement, I was never told to be in behind of patients from my supervisors, so I have not paid attention the safety issue that much.
But I could see your point. There are lots of other tasks that someone should be more cautious about. At the same time, over cautious could be happened as well and sometimes some patients won't try hard not to fall since they know someone is in behind to catch them.
It is hard to draw the line when, I think.
hey Kel, yeah I think I'm with you here on this one. I know because it's in a professional setting that it needs to be safe and i'm not sure if the parents would be too happy if they were paying for therapy and all they could see was that the therapist didn't seem to care if their child was falling over or not. But to be honest I have loads of young cousins and i dont think i've ever seen any of my aunties or uncles huddle behind their child just in case they fall. From my experience with kids I feel that the falling over and all the mistakes they make are all about learning for them, these mistakes help reinforce motor learning patterns and give external feedback on whether the task has been carried out effectively or not, and personally, if a child continues to fall over ever time with a task, clearly it is too advanced for their skill level and needs to be taken down a notch before the task is tried again. Thats just my point of view, and chances are i would never say that to my supervisor if they belived so strongly about their case....
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