Alternative Approaches

My whole Cardio placement has been smooth sailing, that was up until this week where I had to treat a number of complex patients, not so much complex in their clinical presentation or pathophysiology but more so language barriers. On Wednesday the ward had four new patients which I was given, a Polish lady with little english and was really drowsy, a Turkish man also with little english, an Aboriginal man who I could not understand one word of, and an elderly man suffering from delirium (almost sounds like the start of a joke). Actually, my initial assessments were a joke. My subjective examinations and time management suddenly went pear shaped because of the inherent difficulty trying to extract important information, such as previous mobility, and cardio related problems. The one thing I failed to really pick up on was there are many other ways of skinning a cat. If I had of gone through old notes, spoken to other allied health staff and/or called relevant sources such as next of kin, hostels/nursing homes/retirement villages I would have obtained all my subjective info in half the time and my treatment would have been a lot more effective. So in reflection, and words of wisdom I can share is don’t waste your time persisting in playing charades and word association games in getting your subjective material with patients who don’t speak the lingua franca. Good luck with your PCR’s my little oompa loompa’s.