Hi All,
At the moment I'm on my neuro placement. One of my pts has expressive aphasia. During our treatment sessions, I'm finding it difficult to understand what he tries to tell me. He doesn't talk very often, but when he does usually I have no idea what he is saying (except when he swears, which is perfectly clear and understandable). Sometimes I try to pretend I know what he's saying, but he knows that I don't understand. But when I do try to understand and he has to repeat himself several times, he gets a bit frustrated, and I also get frustrated. Does anyone have any ideas?
1 comment:
Even though I haven’t had a neuro patient but I can perfectly comprehend what it’s like when the patient tries to communicate with you and you have absolutely no idea what they’re trying to say. I’m in ICU and the first thing that happens when the patients become stable is to wean them off their sedation. These patients will still have their ETT in place, a load of drains and attachments and when they wake up the first thing they want to do is to ‘talk’. But could they talk with an ETT, the answer is obviously ‘no’. The strategies the staff and I use to overcome this communication issue is to get them to write things down (not sure how neurologically capable your patient is), also allocate body language to a particular expression. Ie patient wants ice for this mouth, they will open their mouth and stick theirtongue out.I suppose it’s also an experience issue, once you get to know the patient better, some of their body language and mouthing will indicate to you what they want. Hope this helps.
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