Hi,
I'm David Lawrence and in this video I'm going to talk about and show you how to
get down to and up off the floor with a prosthetic limb.
Alright, when we're working on transferring with a unilateral prosthetic device,
the first thing you want to work on is getting on the floor safely so the
patient can get down and get around if they need to,
but also if they need to simply practice transferring from the floor,
they need to get down there safely.
So the easiest way to do that is have the patient scoot forward on the mat
slightly good, tuck the prosthetic back underneath her a little bit good,
and then lean over hand on the mat until she kneels on that prosthetic.
Come right down on it. Boom.
You can kneel on this prosthetic as much as you want.
The pressure in the socket is no different than if she was standing so she can
put as much weight on it if she needs to.
Now I'm going to have you come all the way down on the floor and then roll all
the way there. You go to your back and completely lay out on the mat.
So if you had the big crash, you are flat on the ground right out.
The first thing you want to do is don't rush to get up. All right.
When you get up, it's basically let your heart stop beating.
If there's people around you, let them know that, "I've got this.
Don't yank on me, don't pull on me." But the first thing you do is you sit up,
don't stand up.
So go ahead and sit up and look at your prosthetic leg and make sure the
prosthetic foot is facing the ceiling.
If it is and you know it's still donned correctly, nothing broke or shifted.
If it is completely not on you, you need to re-donn it before you stand up.
If it's broken,
you're going to need help and let people know that you're going to need help and
likely a wheelchair because there's going to be nothing to stand on when you get
up. But if we're in this position, we look pretty good.
I want you to scoot away from me just a little bit.
Cross your prosthetic over top of your other leg and then roll over onto your
hands and knees. As you do that because you started cross,
the legs will end up uncrossed. All right, simple mistake.
If you don't cross your legs first, you you roll over,
a lot of times your feet are crossed up behind you. It's very hard to get up.
From this position,
she's in a position where she could crawl to something higher at her,
which is always the thing to do. So in this case, we have a mat here,
so she's going to crawl over here towards this mat,
get herself in a position where she's kneeling on both knees,
then bring her right leg forward into a foot position.
Lean forward onto the mat and press forward as she presses that knee fully
straight underneath her. Once she's up,
always tell a patient then go ahead and turn and have a seat
if you have a place to sit, because obviously sometimes when you first get up,
your heart's still beating a little bit from the fall or if you just need to
kind of like collect your thoughts before you take off.
So if the patient has fallen and there is nothing around them to get a hold of,
then they're going to basically go from this same position,
checking their feet to make sure the prosthetic is on correctly.
Scoot a little bit away from me, cross leg over,
get onto your hands and knees so you're in a position of power.
She can press down on that knee. Now from here, if there's nothing to hold onto,
she needs to get up in the middle of the floor.
She's going to bring her right foot forward into a stable position. From there,
press into her hands,
bring her leg underneath her and then press up into a standing position.
Always wants to get herself stable. She makes that look pretty easy,
but that's something that takes a lot of practice to work on.
Coming up into that position. Okay in this scenario,
we're going to look at a patient who is again fallen.
They're looking at their feet to make sure their feet are both facing straight
up. They're going to get to the position of power.
They're going to get up with nothing to hold on to,
but they do have someone around. It can be a family member, can be a friend,
can be someone simply walking by.
The key is to as the patient to take control and direct the individual as to
what you need, which is basically you just need them to be stationary,
statuesque, and don't move.
Don't pull on me as young trying to get up so I'm going to have you cross over.
Get to your hands and knees.
I've come into a position to be able to help.
She wants to get to her hands and knees. If she can, stable,
lean into me, press up. I'm not pulling on her at all.
Now notice the other thing that's really important is I don't let go of her.
Many times people get up and we let go real quickly cause we don't want to make
too much contact when the person is still feeling unsteady from the fall.
So you always hold onto them and let them let go of you. When they feel steady,
they're going to make that. They're going to break that contact.
So you always stay close.
Stay a hold of them until they they'll they let go of you.
And I'm always in a position with my feet apart, knees bent, arms,
just strong if I may just put them together, whatever I want to do,
just be statuesque cause they need you to kind of crawl up on.
But I don't want to grab her and pull.
She's going to control the lift the entire thing herself. Once she's up,
I don't let go of her until she's ready and walks away from me.
Thanks for watching and we hope that you found this helpful.
This video is part of a series on prosthetic interventions ranging from managing
the residual limb after amputation to running with a prosthesis.
We encourage you to view our other videos in this series and to share them as
well. You can find them on our YouTube channel at YouTube.com/MissionGait .
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