Hi Diane! Me, I'm quite impressed with your work with your patient - you may not have conveyed to us all that you do and I guess this is because some of it happens "silently" - but you seem to have established a great working relationship with him. You've together found out a lot about his motivation. He actually is loosing weight - he keeps weights in his room - he wants to go on about his training, weight loss and independence. For a person whose problems stem from serious overweight this is really something!!
So I hope you congratulate yourself about these achievements and don't start questioning everything you do as a result of our probing here. Consider the opposite: Him not being motivated to loose weight, work out, or much engage in changing his situation, the isolation included.... Even if you'd then succeed in some improved independence - ie from him learning some good ole OT tricks and lots of adaptive equipment and environment changes - my guess is he would soon either die from complications to his lifestyle, or suffer a very low quality of life. It's not that I disagree with what Ron and Chris said - it's just that there's more to it IMO - like establishing 'rapport' with patient, digging into motivation (like what actually 'moves' the patient), considering overall QOL etc. You seem to really have gone there, and I suspect this has guided your choice of intervention in more ways than meet the eye! Off my soap box for now:-) Warmly susanne, denmark PS: A few abbreviations I didn't understand: PN, therex, RW. Could you elaborate? -- Options? www.otnow.com/mailman/options/otlist_otnow.com Archive? www.mail-archive.com/[email protected]
