On my last prac I was on a respiratory medical ward and I encountered many situations where communication was extremely difficulty due to the patient speaking very limited or no english. One particular situation was a patient who was actually part of the surgical team, but had been outlied to our ward. She was a 30 year old lady who was from sudan and spoke basically no english as her primary language was sudanese. She was 20 weeks pregnant and had presented for abdominal pain. At first they thought it was appedicitis so she went in for an appendectomy. Whilst in surgery they found an ovarian cyst which was drained. I saw the patient post op day 2. My superviser had attempted to see her post op day 1 and was unable to get her out of bed as she appeared to be in a lot of pain and communication was difficult. Unfortunately the hospital was unable to organise an interpreter and there were no family members present at the time who could translate.
When I saw the patient she looked like she was in a lot of pain and was indicating that she was. She had a PCA in situ so the medical team were querying why she was in so much pain as it was a relatively small procedure with a small incision. When I tried to tell her we needed to get her out of bed for a walk she was protesting. Due to the fact that she didnt understand english it was hard to explain to her the reason for wanting to get her up. In the end we were able to stand her out of bed for a few minutes but she was not able to take any steps.
During our treatment, the surgical team came into her room to assess her. One of the doctors went to observe her wound and instead of trying to preserve her modesty because she wasnt wearing any underwear, simply lifted up her gown and invited some of the other doctors to also observe.
I really felt for this lady as she looked absolutely petrified. I tried to think how I would feel if i was in her situation. She was 20 weeks pregnant, had surgery which she didnt even know what they had done, was in extreme amounts of pain and strange people are trying to get her out of bed. And to top it all off the medical staff came around and made no attempt to keep her covered. I was very shocked at how rude and disrespectful the medical staff were, as it wouldnt have taken much to simply use a towel to cover her.
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i have also encountered several occasions where surgeons have displayed some of the worst bedside manner that i have ever seen. i'm not sure whether they are just not taught that kind of thing in med school, but it seems to be a general trait displayed by many. and of course we are in no place to comment or make judgement. most of the time it think it is generally accepted by other medical staff beacuse thats how it has always been. on the other hand i have also met some fantastic surgeouns and medical staff which show genuine interest in their patients.
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