I continue to be amazed at the power of mobility for patients. There has been a lot of talk in the journals lately about early mobilization for critically ill patients, it's becoming the standard of care in ICUs.
One of my cousins had emergency major abdominal surgery several months ago and her mom, my aunt, wrote in an email to the family that she was shocked and concerned that the nurses wanted my cousin to get up and walk when she was obviously in horrible pain and just had emergency surgery and could we believe that? Yes, I could believe it - and wasn't my cousin lucky that she had nurses who know about the power of moving.
I'm a recent convert to the mobility miracle. But, I'm a believer now because I've seen it work. Patients have less pain, they sleep better, and they get back to their lives faster when they get up to walk. Walk early, walk often.
I asked a co-worker about why getting out of bed right away after heart surgery seems to help these patients so much and she said it's because "they realize they're alive". I agree with that, but I also think that getting out of bed shakes everything back into position. We're not meant to be lying down, we're meant to be upright (shoot, I know, lying down is soooo much more fun). Our innards get all messed up when we stay in bed too long, we have to jostle them back to their rightful place.
Bodies in motion stay in motion, right?
No comments:
Post a Comment