Yellow flags...

Hi all,

Sorry for my late entry as i have totally got the blogging timing all confused. Luckily our fellow colleague Mark has clarified it for me today and hence i got this blog submitted the first thing i arrive home.
Now that i have got the apology out of the way.. i'll go right into the discussion.

I am currently having a placement at Gerontology outpatient of a tertiary hospital. Most of the patients are there for fall assessments/rehab. However there are a few odd cases where the patients are being referred due to social reasons (i.e. depression due to death of spouse).

I have a lady who was being referred to our department due to multifactorial falls. some sounds almost trivial. I was not aware of her social history at the time as i did not have the referral letter at the time. but only later i found out from the letter that she has been drinking sherry every night with prescribed sleeping pills since her husband's death, which now make sense to me why her 'trivial' falls occured between 11pm and 2am. Her case is also being reviewed by the social worker concurrently.

I feel that all i can do is to focus on physiotherapy problems of hers, which was to improve standing/walking balance, and i feel that there's not much else i can do. I am not entirely frustrated by me not being able to do much else as i know she is in good hands of social worker's plus i'm not an expert in social issues/psychology, but it made me feel a little bit sad somehow.

Has any of you had similar type patient? And how did you deal with the situation or how would you tackle it if you were in similar situation? And do u know of any not-for-profit organisation/services that is doing a reach-out for this type of patients?

Chin.