Problem Patients
Just before I arrived at my clinical today, they had dealt with a problem patient who was in for an upper GI study. In a way, I’m glad I missed it, but I also wish I had been there to have the experience. I know that my future will include a lot of problem patients, but I haven’t experienced one myself yet. My clinical site is predominantly for outpatient treatment, but my next site (in about 5 weeks) is a hospital. I’m expecting to see a greater variety of patients when that time comes.
Today’s problem patient was edgy and uncooperative for some reason. The patient had been in a local emergency room last night complaining of severe chest and abdominal pain. They didn’t find anything significantly wrong in the ER, so the patient was referred to my site for the Upper GI study to look for possible signs of an ulcer, reflux, or other GI tract issues. The patient had a hard time taking instructions on the process of this study, and wasn’t very attentive. When the barium solution was administered, the patient spit the solution all over the equipment, the RT, and the radiologist. Prior to that, the first dose of EZ-GAS had been spit out also. The RT and the Radiologist cleaned themselves up and continued the study, after discussing the possibility of stopping it. The antics with this patient continued, but the radiologist was able to get enough fluoro imaging to call the test complete.
I’m not sure what to think about this situation. I’m just curious as to why the patient may have been so uncooperative. It wasn’t a violent or angry sort of uncooperativeness. It was more of a stupid and childish sort of temper tantrum. The constant complaints of pain made me thing this patient was possibly looking for a pain killer prescription, but who knows…