Jumpy patients

Occasionally I have had patients post surgery who are overly confident in their abilities post surgery. The type of patient who as your explaining what you want to do during your treatment session and they have already begun swinging their legs over the side of the bed. As we know they may not be functioning at 100% due to the surgery and medications and thus need to take it slow but still try to do everything before you are prepared. On a recent prac I had one of these patients with my supervisor. However on this occasion it was complicated by the fact that the patient weighed 160kg. He was 5/7 post (R) THR and had been transferred from another hospital to my ward. He reported that he had been up since the surgery in the previous hospital but we had not seen him up as yet. As he was so large he required large efforts to move around in the bed and sit over the edge which often looked very unstable. We tried to explain to him that although he was confident in his abilities we needed to be in good positions and didnt want him just jumping up before he was in a good position either. However he continued to ignore our advice and would try to stand and then walk without our prompting. It was a difficult situation and we particularly worried with the patient as we would not have been able to prevent him from falling and there was not a hoist in the hospital that would have been able to help him up. In the end there was no troubles but my supervisor got quite worked up by the whole situation and again emphasised to him why she had been so strick with him and to not rush what he was doing.

i did not get to see the patient again but it was eye opening