Today we had news that one of the clients had a fall yesterday while transferring. Her boyfriend was helping her get from bed to chair and she stacked it, twisting her ankle, landing on her bum and cracking her head on the way down. They wen straight to hospital, x rays of ankle NAD, and she was vomiting that afternoon. When we saw "Shelly" today she was in a lot of pain sitting on her coccyx, and was quite worried about having to continue doing standing pivot transfers while her ankle and calf were still swollen, TOP and painful on WB. We did a bit of an assessment of her ankle and put on a compression bandage. Bcause she is in a wheelchair most of the day it is pretty hard to get the benefits of elevatting the limb. The PT and OT decided for her own safety that she's going to have to transfer in a sling for the next week or so.
Sounds silly but this experience really highlighted for me how a simple thing like a sprained ankle has completely changed this woman's handling and management programme. A fall that shouldn't have happened has made her already difficult daily transfers just that little bit more tiresome for everyone involved. She's a trooper, she'll be ok in the end, but in the meantime her confidence is battered.
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