Wednesday, April 22, 2009

Medical Complication of the week

I recently did a psychiatric consult for depression on the medical floor. The patient was a late-30s male, weighing in at around 350 lbs. He has diabetes and heart failure. Been hospitalized numerous times in the past few months because of various infections, which have required partial foot amputations and IV antibiotics.

The guy actually had a job (an oddity for the county hospital) up until January when all this started. He let his brother move into his apartment to help take care of him. After his last hospitalization, he was ready to go home but needed several more days of IV antibiotics. They arranged for a home health nurse to go to his house daily to give his dose.

The guy came back now with a bad GI infection. Again, several more days in the hospital and he's ready to go home with IV antibiotics so they called for a Home Health consult. The evaluation from Home health said: "Home health cannot assist this patient at this time. 2 weeks ago, we went to his home to begin his treatment. We knocked on the door, and his brother said, 'Come back later, I'm too busy using drugs right now.'"

Psych doc

1 comment:

LivingDeadNurse said...

at least he was honest...lol