Safety Dance

Until this internship (and I bet this is the same for other MT majors), I had not been in a situation where I needed to worry about a pt's. safety. The closest to that was with the babies in the NICU, but the only thing I had to do was not drop them. Not too hard.

Here... it's a lot different.

In our textbooks, there is a little bit about kids with lots of lines and tubes, but what happens when you are working with a 2 year old who wants to run around & twists those cords all around himself or presses buttons on his IV pole? We talk about impulse control in a verbal sense all the time (saying the first thing that pops into your head, no filter, etc.), but what happens when that impulse control translates to a 16 year old (who absolutely towers over you in the height department), who walks with someone holding onto his gait belt because of balance problems, decides to stand up and walk to the CD player with no warning whatsoever. I'll tell you what happens: this intern jumps up like someone lit a fire under her.

Situations like these call for some "creative positioning". For the first friend I mentioned, sometimes distracting him while throwing a blanket over the pole works. Out of sight=out of mind. For my other friend, I had to stay pretty close to him at all times so that I could jump up and grab that gait belt, and there were a lot of verbal reminders to this kid to get him to remember to say something before he stands up.

Now both of these kiddos had one-on-one supervision at all times so that they didn't hurt themselves, but that can be a lot to handle for just one person! I can assure you that my reflexes have never been sharper. Above all, when working with someone where safety can be an issue, proximity is KEY to keeping those kids from inadvertently hurting themselves. These issues are just another thing that my brain is learning to make room for in addition to the Music Therapy portion of the session. Like, if you are playing the guitar and singing and dancing with your little friend, how are you going to move it out of the way quickly enough if your pt. decides to pull out his PICC line?

Just some food for thought on this lovely Monday.