I worked with Resmi on the virtual ward team on 16/11/23. I had a really good day we went around to patients’ houses and checked their vital signs such as blood pressure, pulse oximetry, respiratory, temperature and heart rate. One lady that we visited was suffering from a cough so I was able to listen to her chest with a stethoscope. I found this very interesting as I had never had the opportunity to do this before.

I learnt that you can identify and diagnose a patient by the noises that you hear from the lungs through the stethoscope. An example of this is, pneumonia is a popping sound, COPD is a wheezing sound and normal is a soft smooth sound. It is important to check for crackles and wheezing.

For another lady that we visited we installed a current health monitor in her home. Again I found this very interesting as I hadn’t seen anything like this before. It consisted of a Samsung Galaxy tablet, a watch for the patient to wear, a blood pressure cuff and an internet box. The idea of the current health monitor was to record the patient’s blood pressure 4 times a day for 7 days.

The benefits of this I found were amazing, as it saves the nurses time so they don’t have to visit the patient every day to check their blood pressure. It also benefits the patient’s well-being positively; this is because the patient can have a normal day-to-day life by doing stuff that they enjoy and getting the things that they need to do done instead of being in the hospital or staying at home waiting for the nurses to arrive to check their blood pressure.

I enjoyed spending the day with the virtual team as I learnt new things and enjoyed visiting patients in their own homes and having nice conversations with them.