hey everyone it's Sarah threads sterner sorry n comm and today we're going to talk about canes and as always after you get done watching this YouTube video you can access the free quiz that will test you on this assistive device so let's get started when you're studying these assistive devices for exams you want to make sure that you know those key concepts about those devices such as canes crutches and walkers and in our previous video we talked about crutches and in our next video we'll talk about walkers so for canes you want to make sure that you're familiar with how a cane should properly fit a patient how to actually walk with a cane how a patient should go up and down stairs with a cane and how they should get up from a chair or sit down in a chair with the cane therefore let's start with the proper fit how do you know as the nurse of this cane actually fits your patient well before a patient uses a cane for the first time it has to be adjusted most canes can be adjusted at the bottom by sliding the cane into location of where it should go to fit the patient but once the patient is holding the cane or once they have the cane standing beside their body how do you know it actually fits the patient well there's two ways you can tell the first way is that the top of the cane which is about this area here should be even with the great trochanter the great trochanter is a prominence of the femur so that's all the cane should rest about right there whenever the patient's standing up and has the cane beside of them or the top of the cane should be even with the wrist crease that is closest to the hand so those are two ways you can tell also whenever the patient is holding the cane the elbows should be flexed at a fifteen to thirty degree angle so those are some things that you can look for as the nurses tell you that this cane properly fits your patient now let's talk about how a patient should walk with the cane before a patient starts using their cane and practicing with it you want to make sure that they are wearing a gait belt for safety in addition you're going to stand on the patient's weak side in case they lose their balance so whenever they start using the cane they want to make sure that they're in the proper position the position that they want to be in they want to make sure that they are positioning the tip of the cane at least four inches from the side of the foot and they want to hold the cane on the strong side of the body so remember that the cane needs to be on the strong side very important concept to remember so how are they going to actually ambulate with this cane well to emulate with the cane what they're going to do is they're going to move the cane with the weak side together forward so they move the cane along with their weak side together and then they will move the strong side forward so how does a patient go up and down the stairs with a cane well the concept is the same like how we learned with crutches remember I told you to remember up equals good down equals bad and what we're referring to is the good leg going up first which would be the strong leg versus whenever we're going down this stairs it would be the bad leg that's going to go first so the weak side therefore how do we go up the stairs using that concept well what the patient wants to do is they want to hold the cane on that good slash strong side then they're going to move the good leg up onto the step and they're gonna put weight onto the cane and then move the cane and the bad leg up onto the step now to go down the stairs the patient again is going to hold the cane on the good side that strong side they're gonna move the cane down onto the step with the bad leg so the bad leg is going down then they're going to move the good leg down onto the step and lastly let's talk about how a patient will sit down and get up using a cane to sit down with a cane the patient is going to back up to the chair until he fills the chair with the back of the legs then the patient will allow the cane to rest on the side of the chair and place both hands on the chairs armrest and place weight on the hands while keeping the weak leg extended out and been the strong leg to sit down to sit up with the cane a patient's going to place the cane on the strong side and lean forward in the chair while keeping the weak leg slightly extended forward then the patient's going to push down on the canes hand grip and the chair armrest and then put weight on the strong leg and stand in position with the cane thank you so much for watching don't forget to take the free quiz and to subscribe to our channel for more videos