this post was submitted on 07 Jun 2023
22 points (100.0% liked)

Asklemmy

43810 readers
1 users here now

A loosely moderated place to ask open-ended questions

Search asklemmy ๐Ÿ”

If your post meets the following criteria, it's welcome here!

  1. Open-ended question
  2. Not offensive: at this point, we do not have the bandwidth to moderate overtly political discussions. Assume best intent and be excellent to each other.
  3. Not regarding using or support for Lemmy: context, see the list of support communities and tools for finding communities below
  4. Not ad nauseam inducing: please make sure it is a question that would be new to most members
  5. An actual topic of discussion

Looking for support?

Looking for a community?

~Icon~ ~by~ ~@Double_A@discuss.tchncs.de~

founded 6 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[โ€“] agertudici@lemmy.ml 4 points 2 years ago

Sign language.

Before I was a psychiatric nurse I sat a lot of 1:1 suicide watch, but also a lot with people who were very sick and had a lot of tubes in various preexisting and created orifices. All of those tubes can be very uncomfortable, and even if the person logically knows they will recover and need the tubes to do that, they have to be constantly reminded to leave them alone. LOTS of people rip out their own urine catheters and even breathing tubes, and the anchor bulbs can make a very bloody mess on their way out.

When communicating with such people I often wished we both knew sign language fully, but I did know some basics I would teach to patients over the course of a shift. I highly recommend everyone knows

  • water/drink
  • toilet (PLUS piss/shit since they might help you differently for either one)
  • pain/hurt
  • food/eat
  • vomit/puke

These'll take you thirty minutes to learn today and if you're strung up in an ICU someday it might make hell an inch less hellish. Communication boards where you point to the letter can help a whole lot, but when you gotta shit you gotta shit!