Multidisciplinary interactions

While on my gerontolgy prac I had the opportunity to work quite closely with the OTs at that centre. Often we saw the same patients, and such was the nature of the centre that you often had a very limited time to see the patients because they came late and had transport coming at specific times. The patients notes were shared between the treating therapists as there was only one set, so it was often difficult to coordinate it so that everyone was able to read them thoroughly.

One morning during the first week of the prac whilst I was reading through a patients notes the OT burst through the door and said 'where are the notes for Mr ___?' He seemed very annoyed as I handed over the notes I was reading and grabbed them off me saying 'you should have given these to me before I need to read them and I'm going to be late for the patient'. I apologised, and once he had left i looked at my watch and saw it was still 5 minutes until the patient would be arriving.

I wasn't aware at this stage of the prac that I should have gone and given the notes to the OT, my supervisor had given me the notes to read with no instructions that the OT was seeing him first and to make sure I gave them to him with enough time so that he could read them also. I suppose that I could have been proactive and asked this however I felt his aggressive reaction was uncalled for. After this interaction I had trouble liasing with him about patients and didn't make an effort to talk to him in the lunch room. This was quite childish of me and I shouldn't have taken his behaviour so personally. However, several other incidents similar to this occurred where he appeared quite annoyed at me after I had done nothing wrong. This experience taught me that you can't get on with everyone and if you take everything to heart it will get in the way of being able to do your job. There was no way I could avoid talking to him and feeling upset about it intefered with how effectively I could get my point across, which could in turn affect the way a patient was treated. So regardless of my personal feelings it's important to focus on the clinical situation.