My First Clinical Experience: A Reflective Journey Look Back I believe placing student nurses in the clinical setting is vital in becoming competent nurses. Every experience the student experiences during their placement has an educative nature therefore, it is important for the students to take some time to reflect on these experiences. A specific situation that stood out to me from my clinical experience was that; I didn’t realize I had ignored the patient’s pain until I was later asked by the nurse if the patient was in any pain. Elaborate It was early morning, so I was assisting my patient with morning care. The patient needed assistance with transfers, so I was assisting her to transfer from her …show more content…
During my care, I was not interacting with the patient rather I was ignoring her statements. Although I was listening attentively and demonstrating attending behaviours by maintaining eye contact and appropriate nonverbal cues I was not connected to her verbally. It is important that there is client-centered communication to make the patient feel comfortable at all times. When the patient was discussing her pain I did not ask the appropriate questions. It is crucial that nurses respond to client empathetically and in a knowledgeable manner (Maruca et al., 2015). Responding to the patient makes them feel understood. In this particular situation because the patient was discussing her pain, I should have assessed her pain. My main focus during the transfer was completing the task and I was unaware of what was happening around me. Empathy often is lost in nursing student in the clinical settings as they become more focused on their professional skills (Maruca et al., 2015). However, if I had felt more competent about my skills I would have been more able to focus less on the task and more on the patient’s feelings. I was not considering the patient’s feelings and was more concerned with my own which was very selfish of me. It is important to gain insight into what the patient is experiencing, what the illness …show more content…
I think it is important that I clarify my own values to ensure that my care is client-centered. Self- reflection during care is also fundamental as it makes me aware of my actions and whether they are establishing a therapeutic relationship or doing the opposite.. Finally, I need to learn to be more empathetic towards my patient’s situations by being interactive, gaining insight and avoid being focused on the task and more on being with the situation. Some things that I will preserve are attentively listening, demonstrating attending behaviours and maintaining my patient’s dignity by ensuring privacy and
Conflict often arises between new graduate nurses and experienced staff over the ideal patient care. The realities of practice often turn out to be contrary to what graduates were taught in university (Phillips, Kenny, Esterman, & Smith, 2014). These discrepancies in practices have been shown to create distress and reality shock for new RNs (Gardiner & Sheen, 2016). Reality shock is experienced when the considerate effort is put into preparing for a specific employment and new employee finds the candidate not prepared at all (Harwood, 2011). This often stems as a result of the gap between a theoretical and practical component of an education (Whitehead, 2011). Ortiz discussed that university education does not prepare graduate nurses to deal with the irritated physicians and family members (2016). All these experiences presented together to the newly qualified nurse 's results in reality
Realistically, most students are not privy to the winding journey of a nursing career. Students learn how to bathe, medicate, feed, assess, and some psychosocial concepts. However, there is no class that teaches or can teach students how to stand back and watch your patients struggle to help themselves, how to face your own mortal...
This care includes supporting the people I care for in their journey through life, encompassing their mental, physical and emotional make up. I see this approach as a shared world view between my nursing peers and myself, and other health care professionals. Goals that I encompass in my everyday practice and that I find important to uphold would include providing safe care, high quality care, promoting a safe environment and increasing my personal knowledge base. All these goals will have a positive impact on the patients helping them return to health, improve health promotion or provide comfort care. Another goal is to lead by example, through showing compassion, understanding, empathy and the ability to respect the decisions of others. I believe that the key to providing this type of high quality care rests on the foundation of nursing
What I learned is that in order to care for a patient a nurse needs to be more concerned about quality of life rather than quality of health. I also learned that in order to develop empathy and a sense of caring for a patient, a nurse should use specific strengths-based qualities while incorporating other skills to understand the patient’s story. This in turn will allow a nurse to establish a plan of care that is different for each patient as well as truly caring about the well being of a
I constantly reported to her concerning the condition of the patient in close time intervals across the day. On this day, a patient of mine had an IV site concern. The nurse assigned me to make some adjustme...
Education for registered nurses provides significant benefits to the nursing career and therefore, it is imperative. As a registered nurse, education has influenced my practice at the hospital considerably. One of the major areas influenced by education is caring for patients. As a nurse, caring for patients is one of their primary responsibilities. Education for nurses emphasizes the need to show care and empathize with the patient besides providing competencies and knowledge for the nurse clinician (American Associations of Colleges of Nursing, 2014). While care is something intrinsic, educators strategize on learning situations and teaching designs
According to the College of Nurse of Ontario (2006), empathy is one of the five key components of the nurse-client relationship and is one of the most powerful tools. You don’t need to know how your patient feels to be empathetic but letting them know that you are trying to understand is a good start. It can be used to describe a variety of experiences and had been defined by emotional researchers “as the ability to imagine what someone else might be thinking or feeling” (University of California, Berkeley). Having the ability to empathize doesn’t mean you will or that you are willing to help someone in need but it is an important first step towards a compassionate
This paper explores the personal philosophy I have as a nursing student and what I intend to convey throughout my nursing career. A philosophy is “an analysis of the grounds and concepts expressing fundamental beliefs (Merriam-Webster’s online dictionary, n.d.). Before entering into any profession it is important to evaluate your personal philosophy about the profession, as it pertains to values and principles in which believe in to guide your practice. The field of nursing is more than treating a physiological ailment, but it involves providing quality care for the individualized needs of each patient, hence being client centered. My philosophy of nursing integrates the importance of knowledge base practice of medicine, combined with addressing holistic needs of the patient and family, including the physical, psychological, cognitive, emotional, spiritual and social care (Scottish Intercollegiate Guidelines Network, 2010). Additionally, a vital aspect of nursing is effective interpersonal relationships with other healthcare professionals to promote quality patient care. Moreover, my philosophy includes the importance the client-nurse relationship to aid in health promotion to prevent illness and increase the level of health of clients.
In contemporary nursing practice, nurses need to integrate scientific knowledge and nursing theories prior to providing optimal health care. Nursing theories guide nurses to treat clients in a supportive and dignified manner through client centred approaches. However, it is challenge for nurses to practice client centred care in daily realities due to heavy workloads. In order to assist nurses to decrease the gap between ideal and real practice, Registered Nurses Association of Ontario (RNAO) develops Best Practice Guideline of Client-centred-care (Neligan, Grinspun, JonasSimpson, McConnell, Peter, Pilkington, et al., 2002). This guideline offers values and beliefs as foundation of client-centred care, and the core processes of client-centred care can facilitate provision of optimal nursing care. These four core processes of client-centred care include identifying concerns, making decisions, caring and service, and evaluating outcomes. According to RNAO (2006), ongoing dialogue with clients and self-reflection are essential for nurses to develop their nursing skills and knowledge on client-centred care. As a nursing student, I reflected on written transcripts of interactions between patients and me, so that I could gain insights into client-centred care for further improvement. Therefore, the purpose of this paper is to discuss importance of the core processes of client-centred care in nursing practice through identifying and critiquing blocks to conversation. Based on the guideline of RNAO (2006), respect, human dignity, clients are experts for their own lives, responsiveness and universal access will be elaborated in each core process of client-centre care as reflecting on three dialogues with patients.
It is important that students have the ability of being competent in a clinical setting. To be deemed competent in skills according to nursing regulations and requirements. This is a challenging factor for many students, as they enter transition period. This is due to students feel they do not have the desired clinical competency that promotes the skills and authorities of a registered nurse (Harsin, Soroor & Soodabeh, 2012). Clinical research studies have found that students do have the required expected levels of knowledge, attitude and behaviour’s. However, the range of practical skills aren’t sufficient for the range of practice settings (Evans, 2008). This research has also found that other evidenced based studies found that competency in nursing skills is still lacking (Evans, 2008). These skills are lacked by students and newly graduated nursing how are in the first or second year of
Nursing students at State University need better clinical experiences and better clinical sites. Clinical sites that have nothing to do or preceptors who don’t want to educate should be cut out and replaced with better sites. Ideally each clinical should allow nursing students to gain experience in critical skills and patient ca...
Initially I thought that nursing was a career that can be taught. I felt nursing was only science and once you had mastered the science of nursing you could become a competent nurse. Since fall my view of the profession has changed drastically, I am starting to realize and appreciate the uniqueness of each quality that develops the art of nursing. For instance, I thought nursing knowledge was limited, once you have graduated nursing school you would have gained all the knowledge necessary. I now realize that knowledge does not only come from books but also from experience. With accountability, it is important for me to be able to admit to my mistakes. When I admit to my mistakes I grow as a nurse and as a person as I am able to learn from my mistakes. When being an advocate for my patients, I must not allow my own biases to interfere. I have to acknowledge my own biases so that I do not neglect care for my patients or make biased assumptions about patients rather than advocating for their needs. I always thought that sympathy is a universal value in nursing but rather empathy is. As a nurse I must understand the patient’s situation in order to be efficient rather than being sensitive to their situation. I also realize that it is very important for nurses to be adaptable as they face different and unique situations every day. I have concluded that a nurse is never done
New nurses are faced with discomfort as soon as they enter the profession. Hence, it is suggested that precautions be taken even before nurses graduate. The educational system should consider the involvement of clinical staff in the teaching process. This will enable student nurses to meet actual nurses prior to entering the profession (Goodare, 2015). In other words, to make the transition easy, nursing education must include actual exposure to the clinical practice where student nurses are required to not merely become observers but actually participate in the process of providing care. In this manner, the student nurses will not find it hard to transition into the workplace when they become official part of
After the handover, I was asked by my mentor to attend to a patient who is bed ridden to have her personal care done with the assistance of one of the health care assistant staff. The patient was recently admitted to the ward and she looks sc...
There are 3 carative factors that I believe are extremely important to my personal philosophy of nursing. The first is carative factor number three. It states, “Cultivating one’s own spiritual practices and transpersonal self, going beyond ego self” (Watson, 2008, p. 34) This will allow me time for self reflection, a time to be silent and a time to listen. The second carative factor that I will incorporate into my personal philosophy is “Developing and sustaining a helping-trusting authentic caring relationships” (Watson, 2008, p. 34). I will always practice fidelity. I will treat people the way I want to be treated and trust is a major factor for me. Finally I will use carative factor number five, “Promotion and acceptance of the expression of positive and negative feelings” (Watson, 2008, p. 34). I will actively listen to the patients concerns or their point of view. I will acknowledge their feelings and then release my positive energy by revealing a positive side in hopes they will see things