Recently we were called to assist two PTS Crews (Three people in total) to move a “large” patient into his house. This patient fell into the Bariatric category of “large” – I had no idea that we transported people of this size….
The patient had been collected by the PTS Crew and was taken to a hospital some 40 miles or so away for some tests. The crew had brought the patient home following the completion of his tests – the vehicle is a Bariatric Ambulance, designed to carry only 1 patient at a time, with a mechanical winch and ramp to get them on board. This particular patient was in a wheel chair, a wheel chair of the size that I have never seen before.
Having said all of this, there was no reason that we shouldn’t be able to get him into his house, after all, he came out of it! The first Problem – the wheel chair will not fit through his doorway, furthermore, there are two steps into the house. No problem, he doesn’t normally need a wheel chair and walks with a frame. So we wheel him upto his front door, give him his frame, and the five of us help him to stand up whilst he holds on to his frame. There is nothing really to hold onto to assist him to stand, but never the less, we try our hardest – he can’t help us and we are not strong enough to get him to stand, we are now in danger of him collapsing where he is and landing on his gravel drive – not a good situation to be in!
We try to explain to the patient that if he can’t stand that we do not feel that it is safe or humane to leave him at home. Firstly he can’t even stand to transfer himself from his bed to his commode, secondly, should there be a house fire, there is no way that he would ever get out. Its at this point that our fat patient (please note I have nothing against fat people – after all, I used to be one!) became irate, unhelpful, irrational and most definitely ungrateful!
The reason being was that he didn’t want to be taken to a hospital…. He tried to tell us that he was 24 stone (I was only 6.5 stone away from this weight and was never as big as he was), I would guess nearer to 44 stone. He tried to tell us that 2 men had carried him out of his house to get him to hospital – again, something that I do not believe (as my crew mate said, “Not unless they were both Hulk Hogan” – She is just showing her age now lol!). The next thing that he said was that he had rights, his right to not be taken to hospital – now he is probably right with regard to that, but he doesn’t have the right to stay in our wheel chair or the right to tell us to just “tip him onto the floor so that he could crawl”.
We explained that we had a duty of care to ensure that his condition didn’t worsen and by tipping him on to the floor we would be in breach of this.
We tried multiple ways of getting him to stand – lifting cushions, changing the angle and elevation of his wheel chair, considered ramps and many many alternatives, but could not find a way to get this patient into his house without causing us and him harm.
Its at this point that the patient is now threatening to “Throw himself out of the Wheel Chair” – now this I would have liked to see, mainly because if he had the ability to do this, he would have the ability to stand with assistance. If he had attempted to do this there is no way that we would have tried to soften his fall, we would most definitely have been injured trying to stop him.
We explained that if he did throw himself out we would probably need the fire brigade to assist us in lifting him and that after that he would have to go to hospital anyway as he would now be injured.
This whole process took over an hour – my crew mate did the majority of talking as she is much better mannered and more patient than I am…. but even she gave up with him!
Needless to say we arranged for him to go to a different hospital and then left the very grumpy patient with the very nice PTS crew – our thoughts were with them for the following 20 minute journey.
