Yet another difficult patient..

In one of my placements, I met a 53 year old lady, was admitted to the hospital 2/52 after a CVA. She is still employed as a CEO in a very reputable accounting firm. She sustained right (R) sided hemiplegia from the CVA . She has been attending inpatient physio rehab daily. Since then, she has shown some improvement in motor recovery. She was going to be discharged in a few weeks and will be attending outpatient rehab. She is very anxious about her recovery as she is adamant about returning to work as soon as she is able to. She has been one of my difficult, non-compliant patient as her frustration builds up quite easily during treatment sessions. One day however, she asked me about acupuncture and whether it is a good idea to pursue it once she gets out of the hospital. I had done a bit of research into it before so I gave her an answer. I told her that I can’t promise it will be helpful for her as research does show that acupuncture to some extend helps with recovery but not everyone really benefit from them. So my advice was to give it a try and see whether it works for her. Clearly she wasn’t happy with my answer and just looked away. Anyway I went on treating her that day and she appeared really apprehensive about me treating her. I wasn’t sure what was going on then I asked her politely, if everything is alright and then she became rude and used inappropriate words against me. I was so frustrated because I had worked so hard to get her on my side and then suddenly she reacted that way. I had to just leave her that moment. I spoke to my supervisor and she decided to take me off her case.

When I looked back at what had happened, I am still not sure how I would have handled it differently but I have a certain regret that I was taken off the case without a chance to learn a way of dealing with a situation like that so that when faced with a similar situation in the future I will be better at knowing how to handle it. However in the future, if I do come across a situation like that, I probably will give them the space they need for a bit and come back on a different time and attempt finding out what the issue really is. I guess in a lot of patient it important to make them realize that we are there to help them in their recovery and we can only achieve it if they allow us to. Whether this is the way to go, I am still not sure, anyone have any ideas?