Yesterday at work, a patient whose CPAP trial I had done the previous week, walked in demanding to be seen. He was extremely aggressive and abusive to the frontline staff who tried to help him.
We operate a "no appointment, no see" policy which we had to put in place last year, as we have approximately 10,000 (and growing daily) patients who are with us for life and if each one simply turned up, we'd never get anything done.
Each patient has the option to phone in for reassurance or help, as we know it is quite a daunting prospect being at home with a machine you don't understand. We give them all the necessary information that they take home with them. If we cannot help them over the phone, we bring them in for an earlier appointment than their scheduled follow up.
Anyways, I offered to speak to him. He seemed relieved, but still a little uptight.
After a long discussion, the concerns he had were the same that many have and it was sorted.
It was only afterward that I recalled that this patient was not able to read or fill in any admission forms when he came in. His excuse was that he had hurt his hand. He asked me to read the form out aloud to him, fill in the necessary info and he would sign it. On going through his notes, the questionnaire that had been sent in when he was first referred, he'd struggled to fill it in.
That was when I realised there was a possibility that he was either dyslexic or partially illiterate.
We so take for granted that everyone can read or write well.
I may be wrong, but if this is a question of literacy, he had probably not wanted to phone as he would never have been able to tell us what the readings are or change the settings on his machine as we talked him through.
So it is easier for him to walk in demanding to draw our attention away from his inability.
How sad that he has to use this defence tactic. Instead of us being compassionate and going out of our way to help him, he has now put a red alert on his file as an ill-mannered and obnoxious person. The NHS sees this as abuse and operates a "zero tolerance" for this kind of behaviour and should be he rude again, he will be discharged from our care.
I am sincerely hoping that our discussion will go a long way to reassuring him that we are not ogres out to "get" him or show him up in any way. I am sure that I can say this about 99% of hospital staff.
We operate a "no appointment, no see" policy which we had to put in place last year, as we have approximately 10,000 (and growing daily) patients who are with us for life and if each one simply turned up, we'd never get anything done.
Each patient has the option to phone in for reassurance or help, as we know it is quite a daunting prospect being at home with a machine you don't understand. We give them all the necessary information that they take home with them. If we cannot help them over the phone, we bring them in for an earlier appointment than their scheduled follow up.
Anyways, I offered to speak to him. He seemed relieved, but still a little uptight.
After a long discussion, the concerns he had were the same that many have and it was sorted.
It was only afterward that I recalled that this patient was not able to read or fill in any admission forms when he came in. His excuse was that he had hurt his hand. He asked me to read the form out aloud to him, fill in the necessary info and he would sign it. On going through his notes, the questionnaire that had been sent in when he was first referred, he'd struggled to fill it in.
That was when I realised there was a possibility that he was either dyslexic or partially illiterate.
We so take for granted that everyone can read or write well.
I may be wrong, but if this is a question of literacy, he had probably not wanted to phone as he would never have been able to tell us what the readings are or change the settings on his machine as we talked him through.
So it is easier for him to walk in demanding to draw our attention away from his inability.
How sad that he has to use this defence tactic. Instead of us being compassionate and going out of our way to help him, he has now put a red alert on his file as an ill-mannered and obnoxious person. The NHS sees this as abuse and operates a "zero tolerance" for this kind of behaviour and should be he rude again, he will be discharged from our care.
I am sincerely hoping that our discussion will go a long way to reassuring him that we are not ogres out to "get" him or show him up in any way. I am sure that I can say this about 99% of hospital staff.
