Week 1 Entry: INTERVENTION

Today I had a great learning experience as a result of doing the wrong thing. We had done an initial assessment on an 82yr old lady who was recovering from pneumonia, was deconditioned and as well as had severe swelling of her lower limbs and especially around her left knee as a result of a fall. Our first treatment priority for the day was do decrease some of the swelling as it was severely affecting her mobility and comfort. However, as a result of a misunderstanding with our supervisor we performed RICE techniques and gentle massage to both lower limbs when we should have only been applying these treatments to the area around her knee injured in her fall. The error in this situation was that we didn't have a thorough understanding about what was causing the bilateral lower limb oedema and hadn't considered that this may be secondary to and infection or cardiac complications, in which case RICE and massage would be very inappropriate. I now am aware that is essential to be able to explain why you are doing a treatment before jumping in and doing it as well as the importance of liasing with the medical staff to discover if a sign is symptom is in fact caused be a medical imbalance and therefore not suitable for physiotherapy. That is, basic clinical reasoning about why you are doing something is vital before beginning any intervention.