hey guys
sorry for the lateness of this blog. Well this happened to me in the last week of placement at oncology at RPH. A pt had been in for several weeks with renal cell cancer with mets to the lungs and bones. She was currently on palliative radiotherapy and at the time, also had an infection which made her very ill and weak. I had been seeing for regularly for mobility type treatment but had deteriorated over the weekend and was now unable to even transfer out of bed. Her husband approached me and wanted to ask for my advice on purchasing an expensive type of herbal oil to help his wife regain her mobility. He was quite persistant with wanting my advice. From what he described, it sounded like a heat gel and i got the impression ( and he also acknowledged the same thing later) that he wasn't fully aware of what was causing his wife to be immobile (i.e disease progression plus the effects of treatment and the infection) and thought this "oil" could be the answer. I explained to him he should discuss this with the doctor as I didn't feel it was my place to discuss the medical status of his wife if the doctor's hadn't yet. I then went to find the doctor's and approached them about what the husband had asked and requested they go speak to him about his wife. I saw the husband later and he thanked me for getting the doctors to see him; he felt he was now better informed about his wife's condition and had got an answer about the herbal oil.
1 comment:
Hol, it sounds like you handled the situation really well. I too have seen some pts or their family put all their hopes into an obscure or risky treatment that medically speaking holds little hope for them. I believe the worst thing we can do is disregard their thoughts and its not our role to say how unlikely an alternative treatment is - thats for the doctors to discuss and i think you did a good thing by finding out as much as you could from the pt and then referring on to the doctors.
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