Leshell Nembhard

Leshell was caring for a patient who was deaf with the inability to communicate verbally. He used American Sign Language to communicate. During care, the patient had trouble communicating with his nurse prior to our shift. In report, Leshell was told the patient was “crazy” and the nurse couldn’t pinpoint his problem, but he wouldn’t cooperate with medications. Leshell was looking forward to performing medication pass with this patient. She obtained the iPad used for interpreting on the floor. She did have to borrow it from another patient but there was no problem there. The sign language interpreter helped her communicate with the patient. The patient had been trying to ask the nurse to get the iPad to communicate but was misunderstood to mean “change my pad”. He was so upset by the entire incident, he hadn’t slept and felt so “overwhelmed”. Leshell was able to calm him down and work with him to administer his medications as he was able to tolerate them. This was a great example of patient-centered care and advocacy, I hope the message was passed on to the staff.