Reflective Essay On Critical Care

The critical care setting is a complex environment with many moving parts. Caring for a critically ill patient necessitates a multifaceted and dynamic approach. It is important to recognize that the care these patients require is much more than just checking vital signs and titrating medications. It involves attention to physical and psychosocial aspects. Throughout many years of working as a nurse and nurse practitioner in neurocritical care, my personal philosophy of nursing has evolved and become more holistic in nature. After reading about various nursing philosophical worldviews, I found myself drawn to the unitary-transformative worldview (Newman, Sime, & Corcoran-Perry, 1991). Within this worldview, human beings are self-organizing and develop within a larger self-organizing structure (Newman, 1995). Using this perspective, critically ill patients and caregivers could be considered self-regulated wonders embedded into a larger self-regulated arena known as the critical care unit. The

The neurocritical care service I work with, cares for a multitude of patients with complex critical illnesses and traumatic injuries. Physical illness and injury, anxiety, fear, sadness, and stress are all common themes among patients admitted the neurocritical care unit. For my potential DNP project, I would like to explore the use of animal assisted therapy (AAT) in the neurocritical care unit. AAT is a type of therapy that brings animals and people together with the hope of improving the physical and emotional state of a patient (Barba, 1995). There is positive evidence to support the use of AAT in a variety of healthcare settings (Halm, 2008). AAT has been associated with physical and psychological benefits (Barba, 1995). The aim of this project would be to measure if AAT has a positive physiologic and psychologic impact on patients and caregivers in the neurocritical care