It’s been a couple weeks since I have done a blog entry. The chaos before Thanksgiving has kept me busy but I have still kept up on my hours. Today is December 2nd. Today I had my longest patient. The patient’s ride said he was going to be at the hospital in 15-20 minutes and an hour and half later he shows up. I would be lying if I said that wasn’t frustrating. Regardless I kept calm and composed while I was around the patient. Unfortunately it did take a bit of motivation for the day out of me. I was able to push through but for the first time I really wanted to be done for the day.

To distract myself from that I tried to take more patients that I usually do to get my mind off of it. It worked pretty well while not compromising how well my job was done. For next time I need to get into a different mind set after a patient takes that long. I have waited a long time for other things and not been impacted by it. For example hunting I could wait 3-5 hours in one place and not be phased. Granted that is outside and there is the beauty of nature to observed. For me the biggest thing that changes situations is mindsets so I need to keep that in mind.

A few weeks ago we had a topic about a holistic review. This week of volunteering shows what I can work on but what I also recognize can be a strength of mine. My other strengths in relation to my volunteering job are my compassion, my dedication, my hard work and my interest in medicine. My weaknesses are that I can be shy,  hesitant to try certain new things and quiet. It’s from these experiences that I can improve on my weaknesses and keep improving my strengths as well.

If you care to keep reading Sparrow Hospital has also starting testing new wheelchairs! They are made by Stryker. They are supposed to be extremely easy to use because all the yellow buttons/levers are all the parts that move or adjust. The improvements are more maneuverability, ease of use, they have an IV pole, they are supposed to be cleaner (plastic doesn’t grow as much bacteria as leather or metal, storage in the back, brake pedals and easier to push with the different handles.

From experience I can say those improvements actually help out a lot as an escort and it appears patients are liking them as well. I have started using them the last couple weeks and I really like them. That’s not to say they are perfect however. A few annoyances are leg rests (not the foot rests) only have one level of setting which is quite high for some patients. The wheelchair also keep rolling and goes farther if you don’t put the brakes on immediately. The regular wheelchairs would lose momentum a lot faster. Lastly they aren’t as comfortable for obvious reasons because the seat is a hard plastic compared to a faux leather seat.The patient I had for an hour and half asked to move to the older wheelchairs because he was so uncomfortable.

These wheelchairs are certainly a step in the right direction but they could also use some improvements.

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