Problem Solving / Decision Making

Barbara is a HCA who has been working on the general medicine unit for the past year. Today she is being asked to mentor David, a newly hired HCA. David has been working as a casual in residential care and will be working as a casual HCA on Barbara’s medical unit, as well. Today is David’s first men¬torship time with Barbara.
Just as Barbara and David are about to get Mr. Roberts out of bed, Barbara is called by the LPN to of¬fer assistance to Mrs. Jones in the next room. When she returns to Mr. Roberts’ room, she sees David struggling to get Mr. Roberts out of bed. David identifies that the physiotherapy assistant who just popped in the room a few moments ago stated that Mr. Roberts can get out of bed on his own.
Mr. Roberts is an ALC patient and has been on the medical unit for the past 30 days and is well known to Barbara. A second patient on this unit, also a Mr. Roberts, had been admitted for pneumonia sev¬eral days ago and is awaiting his discharge.


Discussion Questions:

1. How might Barbara approach David about his decision to get Mr. Roberts out of bed?

2. What recommendations should Barbara suggest to David about his future decision-making processes related to patient care?

3. What other team members should be made aware of this situation?

4. Identify two ways that interprofessional communication could be improved in this scenario.