Week 5: November 16, 2008

The other day I had one of the amputee in-patients doing some unassisted walking in the parallel bars. This patient had bilateral below knee amputations, so was walking with 2 lower limb prostheses. I had the patient walking without walking aids, however I was right next to her with one hand in front, one behind and because she was only a slight build, I felt comfortable that I could control her if anything did happen.

The patient would usually take around 6-8 steps before beginning to wobble a bit and I would stabilize her, but then she managed to travel the entire length of the bars, which would have been in excess of 25 steps. After congratulating her, I said that she should have a rest in her wheelchair and then we would do some more. Just as the patient was exiting the parallel bars, she lost her footing and began to fall. Miraculously(!) I reached over the bars, got one arm behind her back and also managed to grab her forearm (the patient also had hand and wrist amputations) and caught her inches above the ground. I got her back upright and we made it to the chair.

This was the first time a patient had begun to fall on me and my heart was pounding at a squillion miles per hour. My supervisor had told us that people can fall and be on the ground in a split second and after this little incident, I can safely say that, YES, it happens in a split second! But what I learnt from all this was that, you can never be too careful when you have a patient in your care. In my case, the patient had just walked over 25 steps without an aid, and then almost fell after 2 or 3 steps while walking with the support of the bars, so it can be hard to tell when there is a potential accident just around the corner. So yeah, it’s better to be safe than sorry!

Ozzman out!