Back in the spring, the British developed a popular questionnaire to assess the severity of covid. The hospitals were overcrowded and therefore the patients were interviewed by telephone. Through trial and error, we came up with the following set of questions:
First, you need to make sure that you are talking to the right person, and not to his chatty neighbor.
It is advisable to ask if he is at home now or maybe he is in the store at the checkout. If in the store, then everything is not so bad.
Immediately in the forehead they ask if he is very sick. Many say it is tolerable.
If the patient is at home, then it is necessary to find out whether he is sick in an upright position or is already down and does not rise again.
Can he speak normally, or does shortness of breath interfere?
Find out immediately why the patient agreed to talk to you. Maybe he felt worse, or maybe his relatives made him.
Shortness of breath is then assessed. It is important to communicate with the sick person himself, and not with his family.
First, they ask how his shortness of breath is doing. Moreover, this should be exactly an open question. You can't answer "yes" or "no" to that. It is necessary to provoke the patient to give a detailed answer. While answering, you can hear him puffing. And yet you will not prompt anything. So there is less chance that the patient will lie.
There are three critical questions about shortness of breath:
- Does shortness of breath interfere with speaking?
- Does shortness of breath bother you when you just sit and do nothing?
- Does shortness of breath interfere with normal activities?
If any of this is, then we still need to figure out the changes in time.
That is, it is not so important how much a sick person is complaining right now. It is much more scary when he says that it has become noticeably worse since yesterday.
Listen for any wheezing or wheezing through the phone that you have not noticed before.
It is usually impossible to estimate the breathing rate through the phone, but if it was possible to organize a video call, then it will be possible to calculate how often the patient breathes. Sometimes the naked eye can see that he breathes abnormally often.
Some things that the patient tells about have a separate meaning. When they complain of blue lips or face, this is a serious sign of a lack of oxygen.
If you hear about blue in the face, then the patient should definitely go to the hospital.
Relatives of the patient can talk about warning signs such as spots on the skin, chest pains, head problems. If the patient begins to slow down, stops urinating or, on the contrary, wet himself for the first time, his arterial pressure, responds inappropriately, does not wake up when he is woken up, then all this looks like a sharp deterioration, with which to do at home there is nothing.
Now everyone is constantly complaining to everyone. But such a questionnaire allows you to notice the deterioration in time.
