Question for nurses

[Lackinghope]

If you are a nurse, especially if you work in a care home do you know what a volvulus is without googling?

Do you mean care assistants or RCNs?

Registered nurse

Yes. Though I’m a paediatric nurse, and we have them on my ward.

Yes. General nurse working with patients living with dementia.

@FurForksSake clue is in the title!

Just asked DD who is a nurse (works on hospital ward) and she knew.

No! Never heard of it and I’m a unit manager in a care home, but you never stop learning things in nursing.

I do and I'm not a nurse. Not helpful I know... but they can be fatal.

My elderly mother was discharged from hospital having had pneumonia and volvulus , neither of the care home RCN's knew what a volvulus was . They have the discharge letter which clearly states volvulus.

@NamechangeDDNurse yep, but very common for people to refer to all care home staff as nurses. Reasonable to expect the majority of RCN to know what a volvulus, not reasonable to expect of a care assistant in a care home.

HTH.

I wouldn't necessarily expect them to know what it is (I'm a doctor). I would expect them to think about looking it up though/ explore with the hospital/or the home's GP if there's anything they need to do/watch out for (but there's not really much beyond common sense in an out-of-hospital scenario unless she had surgery and needs specific post op care). Not everyone can be expert in everything...they probably know a lot more about dementia care than the hospital staff who were looking after her.

The whole episode has been a nightmare , she was admitted with severe vomiting, stomach pain, fever . I had to push for a CT scan , was told it wasn't volvulus and then saw it was in the discharge letter. We have had no guidance from the hospital or gp with regard to eating and drinking. The care home tried to feed her beef curry yesterday, which is when I queried it with the nurse who had no idea what I was talking about.

I don’t they should automatically know but be prepared to google if they don’t.

If the volvulus has resolved there is no reason why she cannot eat and drink as normal hence no special advice.

so did she actually have a volvulus or was it just in the differential diagnosis before investigations? What procedure did they do to un-volve her or did it sort itself out? If it's resolved it's probably not a massive problem now, aside for having a lower threshold for investigating if she develops the same signs.

Unless you are a nurse with surgical experience probably won’t know what it is.

We don't know if it's resolved. She was nbm all the time she was in hospital.

That’s what I was wondering, you can’t discharge someone with an acute bowel obstruction, so it’s either resolved or wasn’t one in the first place.

I an AHP I often get gastro referrals and I have not heard of it before!
Has a special diet / food texture restriction been put on the discharge letter?

Yes she did. Whirlpool sign and collapsed ileum.

No , we've had no guidance at all on diet

She's end of life and the hospital referred her to the palliative care team. There was nothing on the discharge letter to indicate that it had resolved.

So had the hospital not given her any food before discharge? Had she been referred to dietitian?Volvulus is quite uncommon and the majority of Nurses ,Doctors would not have had any experience with this condition.
Am not sure what point you are trying to make.

Is there a telephone number on thr discharge letter for you to ring @Lackinghope I’m sorry it sounds so stressful for you and your mother

This is true, I’ve been a podiatrist for 25 years and heard a condition I’d never heard of before. Luckily my manager hadn’t heard of it either. Which is good because I was feeling pretty thick for about 5 mins.

(Trash foot, not a made up term and probably discovered by the vascular team prior to discharge but a heads up would be nice considering Buergers disease was drummed into us and I’ve never seen it)