The nurse bell

During a previous placement I was helping on a gerontology ward, where patients were usually admitted due to falls and mobility issues. One morning I was reading notes prior to treating a patient and I was aware that a patient was continually pressing his nurse bell. This patient’s room was next to the nursing station and eventually a nurse appeared who informed the patient that she was busy and that he would have to wait.

A couple of minutes later I hear someone call for help from this patient’s room. I rushed over to find another physio student propping up this patient with their leg, so I grabbed a chair and we managed to get the patient into the chair. The nurse and medical staff were then informed.

After later questioning of the patient we found he was desperate to get to the toilet across the hall and decided that it could not wait, even though he was unable to walk without assistance. The other student happened upon this patient as they were walking past and managed to grab him before he fell.

After reading the patient notes we found that the reason he was admitted was that he had fallen at home and he had also had a similar fall earlier in the week while trying to get to the toilet by himself.

This raised a number of interesting questions about the care of this patient, most notably why a strategy, such as a bottle or portable commode, was not put in place to stop the patient from trying to get to the toilet by himself after his first fall.

Given this patients falling was motivated by such a basic need as being able to get to the toilet, it highlighted to me that if the basics are overlooked, whether due to understaffing or oversight, then there can be much more serious consequences for the patient, such as a fracture or significant laceration due to falling.