Hey all, I’m sorry if this isn’t the place to post this question We’ll, I’m #NewToEms and I was curious about this. I had a transfer last week, hospital to SNF. It was a dementia/Alzheimer’s pt, who was far progressed down that disease path. The entire time we were them, they were screaming things like, “I’m not ready”, “don’t hurt me, please”, “I’m scared”, “please don’t”, “am I alright?”. My partner was getting annoyed by this pretty early in the call, which is understandable I suppose, but I have family that has this disease so this was a harder call for me. The things the pt was saying we’re red flags for me, as well as the fact that he was completely bed bound and unambulatory, but he had a broken big toe, but I understand that could’ve been caused by a number of other things. Just with words like “don’t hurt me again”, sparked my interest. When we got to the SNF and had to transfer him to the bed, we needed to request the assistance of their nurse as the pt was very large and my partner is smaller. Their nurse seemed to intentionally avoid their room though, and I had to ask 3 times over the course of 25 minutes or so before we finally got help to transfer this pt. I tried really hard with this pt to distract them. It would work briefly, if only for a few moments at a time, but those few moments seemed to comfort the pt. When I was leaving the pt’s room, they started screaming my name over and over again and it tugged at my heart. I asked my sup if this was something I should inquire about for an investigation due to the things the pt was saying, but as it was all subjective proof, he said no. Now, my question is; Is it unethical to go back to this SNF off duty to visit this former pt? I can see how it would be, but this pt hasn’t left my mind and I just wish I could’ve done more to help that momentarily distract them from the hell of a disease process they’re going through.

Thanks for reading. -A baby medic