Victor Currenti is an RN on the Polytrauma Rehabilitation Unit and was assigned to a patient who has complex wounds as a result of combat injuries.
The patient has a severe TBI, colostomy, urostomy, and a gastric tube, and is a bilateral amputee from the pelvis down. Yet the patient is relatively easy to care for. However, helping the father deal with denial and the loss of the son they once knew has been the challenging part.
The father requests only certain nurses, calls for supplies and assistance multiple times within the hour, desires nurses to remain at the bedside during their full shift, and rigidly keeps staff to exact scheduled moments when medications and treatments are due. The father’s attempt to train 25 different nurses to such a rigid routine was setting the unit up for failure.
Victor developed rapport with the father. He didn’t take the father’s behavior personally but took the time to understand where the father was coming from. He involved the father in his son’s care, started training him for caregiver skills, set up treatment schedule checklists and posted them on the patient’s wall so dad could see the treatments and times when staff completed comfort rounds and treatments.
Victor also anticipated the father’s needs by preparing the necessary supplies for the entire day. In the end the father started calling less frequently which freed the nurse to spend more time with his/her other patients. The father started to look more relaxed, was making eye contact, smiling, and I could see he was very appreciative. The very next day the family social worker approached me to say how the father had an unexpected change in behavior as he asked the social worker how to start taking care of himself as he realized he was more focused on his son.