Not such a clever clogs

This week I was asked to take a lady out shadowing with me to learn the ropes. She was a lovely lady, really friendly and attentive to what was saying, by the end of the evening I was convinced she would make a great carer.
At our last call with Brenda, a severely deaf lady who has dementia, I was demonstrating how to put a certain type of pad on.


'First of all' I explained, 'this it is not the ideal kind to put on this particular service user, because it is really designed to be put on when someone is laying down in bed and we dress this lady standing up. Normally we would use the straight forward pull up kind, but because of this lady's incontinence problem these ones absorb better. So as you can see it is designed to be wrapped round the waist and then fed between her legs to be attached by Velcro at the front. As you can imagine this is a nightmare to do on your own, so I guess at the ladies waist and then make it up so it is like a straight forward pull up pair. I have been looking after this lady for a while now so I have a pretty good idea of her size' I add smugly


Brenda, our elderly lady concerned wears a Onesie (with a hood) to go to bed which is another problem altogether. I wheel her into the bedroom and help her undress. When it comes to her trousers I get her stand up using a rota stand and shout '123 UP' I then pull down her trousers and the wet pad. Brenda then sits down and I slip the new pad on up to her knees along with the trouser part of the Onsie. '123UP' and she stands again while I pull everything up and slip her arms into the top half.
'As you can see' I proudly say whilst pulling up the perfectly fitting pad  'I am quite good at guessing the size.
My pupil is suitably impressed
She sits down again and I do the buttons up on the Onesie.
'Now we can move Brenda near the bed and use the rota stand to get her from the chair into bed' I demonstrate 'Once we have got Brenda sitting on the side of the bed she can lean back and we can lift her legs up onto the bed.
As I bent down to do this I notice with horror an obstacle on the bed. It was the clean pad I had made up earlier which meant that in my smugness to show off I had put the soiled pad back on.
Now you try explaining to a deaf lady with dementia who is in the process of snuggling down, that she has got to get undressed again.


On the positive side; To save taking the Onsie completely off and as there was two of us, I did not take the pad off down past her ankles but demonstrated the conventional way to take that particular pad off and on. Extra training