a decent English for this entry.
Please view the
1 minute example video on how to move an elderly person from the bed to the
chair by YouTube. The
process
As you can see in the video, the
caregiver places her right arm between the neck and the shoulder while the left
arm is below the shoulder on the waistline. That is how we transfer an elderly
from the bed to the wheelchair.
One time at the elderly home, one
of my colleagues, W-san, was too hasty in
doing the procedure so it was unsuccessful. She placed both her arms on
E-san's waist and it was unstable
so she slipped and fell by accident. E-san also fell and hit her forehead on
the drawer beside her. W-san was
terrified and called me, "Please come! I made a terrible
mistake." I called a nurse immediately. She came and checked for injuries
from head to toe.
E-san, the elderly lady, was bleeding
on the forehead that the nurse needed
to use a gauze to stop it. She kept on changing the soaked gauze for some time, but the
bleeding didn't stop. The nurse then called her supervisor and after a few minutes, they decided to call an
ambulance.
Five minutes later, the ambulance
arrived with three emergency medical
team (EMT) members. They carefully positioned E-san on the stretcher. W-san, the caregiver trainee, and one office
manager left for the hospital
together with E-san on the ambulance.
W-san was back from the hospital
hours later and apologized to E-san's
family as well as to the staff
in the elderly home. E-san was hospitalized for 2 weeks.
She wrote an incident report about the accident. The managers asked her to review and revise the document
several times before submitting it
to the city office. We also had a unit meeting wherein we talked about why the
accident happened and how to avoid such in the future.
Here is another
story.
At the end of February, two
caregiver trainees in our unit quit their job. As a result the remaining
caregiver trainees worked 24 hours per shift. The 2 caregiver trainees who left
their work were hard workers, so I was afraid that we would have to work harder
from March onwards.
One of the two caregivers who
left, was a team leader who worked as a caregiver for 20 years.
As a beginner then, I had admired her great work and dedication as a
caregiver. In fact, I always sought her advice on how to do things in the
workplace. There were times when I would be the only caregiver trainee in the
unit thus I would have to take care as
many as 10 elderlies all at the same time. Attending to two or three elderlies
all at the same time in their toilet needs would just be impossible without
compromising effective and quality health care. So, before she left, I asked
her how we could possibly handle things being short-staffed.
To my surprise, she gave an answer
that changed my impression of her she said, “There are three toilets in our unit
so you can use all of them at the same time. You can help them
simultaneously by starting with one, and starting the second while the first is
seated on the toilet, and so on. As soon as you are done with maybe the third, it
would be timely then to go back to the first, then to second and so on. “
I said, "I don't
like to act that way! Please imagine what can happen next.
While I am attending to someone, others might call me for emergency.
Unable to go instantly because of a patient I may be attending to at the moment,
the calling patient might stumble or fall to the floor while trying to help herself
alone instead. This can lead to serious consequences – even death which I would
be fully responsible of and answerable for. I can’t take things for granted.
Such was an expected situation and yes, I
encountered it many times. I didn’t handle it though, as suggested by the
leader then. Rather, I explained to the patients that we were short-staffed and
advised them to do their thing with their diapers on for their safety’s sake.
Here is another story.
The male trainee, who became
our new team leader had been over worked and stumbled in his home toilet
at around 2:00 a.m. He was lucky
because he lived with his parents and one of them found him unconscious in the
toilet bleeding from his head at around 5:00 a.m. At 8:30 a.m., his parent
took him to the hospital, which opens at 9:00a.m. They wanted to be treated
ahead of all other patients as emergency. He was CT-scanned his, and
fortunately no serious problem was found except a wound that was had seven
stitches. Our nurses advised him to take 4 or 5 days off due to the
injury.
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