Clinical Reflection

I always feel slightly off when returning to clinical practice after a break, whether that is one week due to SIM or a whole month for Christmas break. I felt like my sense of direction was disheveled this week. My first morning with a client I found myself lost on were to even start with her care. I forgot to introduce myself during my first morning and I found myself relying on the outline sheet for a head to toe. Even finding my way around the unit made things take slightly longer than I would have liked. As the day progressed I began to get back into the groove of things. Going into the second shift my morning was much smoother and I didn’t have to look at my head to toe guide as I preformed my assessments. I felt more comfortable with my charting and was able

This essay will demonstrate my reflective abilities within an episode of care in which I have been involved with during my practice placement. It will discuss several issues binding nursing practice with issues of ethics and the model of reflection which provided me with a good structure and which I found most appropriate, is Gibbs model (Gibbs 1988). This particular model incorporates - description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and the action plan.

Reflection is a process of exploring and examining ourselves, our perspectives, attributes, experiences and actions / interactions. It helps us gain insight and see how to move forward (Nursing Times 2018). I believe reflection is particularly important when it comes to Nursing, as medicine is constantly changing/ improving and us ourselves medical professionals must adapt with the changes in medicine. I find that reflection is extremely useful in doing this as we can look over procedures or experiences that we have had, how that made us feel, whether we would change anything, then in the future we can see the changes that may have been made, whether this has changed our feelings and opinions on medical practice.

Throughout my time on the Mother Baby Care Unit, I have faced many instances in which I have been able to reflect on both my patients and the care that I was providing them. One situation in particular that I found myself critically reflecting upon involved a new mother who was feeling slightly stressed about being discharged as her newborn son would not be going home with her. For confidentiality reasons, this patient will be given the pseudonym of Kayla for the remainder of this reflection.

The objective of this reflection is to explore and reflect upon a situation from a clinical placement on an orthopedic unit. The incident showed that I did not provide safe, timely and competent care for my patient when the oxygen saturation was low. Furthermore, this reflection will include a description of the incident, and I will conclude with explaining what I have learned from the experience and how it will change my future actions.

Skin integrity is an important concept that’s nurses assess on their patients. A key skill in nursing practice is to frequently assess the skin for possible breakdown or decreased skin integrity. Skin assessments should be conducted thoroughly once a shift and frequently reassessed for any signs of change. Skin discrepancies may be the first sign of an underlying issue. Early detection of any breakdown can help to implement interventions sooner. Unfortunately, unless there is a major skin discrepancy, skin issues can easily get overlooked, specifically in documentation and report. The focus of this paper is to research new skin integrity assessments to improve documentation effect and accuracy, resulting in decreased prevalence of skin breakdown in hospitalized patients. Topics discussed include reviewing current practices and new skin assessment techniques that decrease the prevalence of skin breakdown and pressure ulcers.

My experience in mental health clinical was very different from any other clinical I had before. In a mental health clinical setting, I am not only treating client’s mental illnesses, I am also treating their medical problems such as COPD, diabetes, chronic renal failure, etc. Therefore, it is important to prepare for the unexpected events. In this mental health clinical, I learned that the importance of checking on my clients and making sure that they are doing fine by performing a quick head-to toes assessment at the beginning of my shift. I had also learned that client’s mental health illness had a huge impact on their current medical illness.

Valuing expression and understanding the role security and mutual understanding plays in being able to express oneself, I see the importance in every patient feeling safe and like they are being heard to ensure that they are able to speak up if they have any questions or concerns when care is given. The patient should feel comfortable sharing any comments they may have and not fear that they will be mocked or overlooked. Creating a safe and nurturing environment for patients builds trust and encourages candid dialogue. Likewise, several people in underserved communities may have little to no experience with the healthcare system so if you are condescending, or dismissive of their worries they may not want to come seek care in the future. Thus, as an upcoming nurse, I will do my part to make sure every patients experience involves respect and security to ensure my patients are able to express their needs and concerns so that I can serve them in the manner that best fits

During our return demonstration, we all felt like we needed to look to our instructor for guidance in what we should do. The reason for this was because we all lacked the confidence to feel like we knew what we were doing. If I could do it again, I would have liked to have been more knowledgeable about the scenario so that I could be more confident.

My reflective clinical practice experience was based on my eight weeks placement in an acute mental health ward in a hospital. I was not sure of what to expect because I have never worked or placed in an acute ward and this was my second placement. Before starting my placement, I visited the ward and was inducted around the ward. This gave me a bit of confidence and reassurance about working in an acute ward.

Also, the objective is to find patient’s document finding and correlate it with chronic disease process of elderly adults. With this reflection, I will discuss what I’ve learned, and my strengths and weakness in my clinical experience.

Looking back to the first day of clinical to the last day I have changed a lot during this time. During the whole clinical experience I had to use a lot of the growth mindset in-order to get fully through the whole process. My clinical teacher and I didn’t quite have the same opinion on certain things. While we did struggle through are different mindsets, it was a great learning experience. I will have people I work with that I don’t always agree with and I will have to find a way to compromise with them. This was something we talked about with each other and worked through. So, Im grateful in that aspect in learning how to deal with those situations. I also changed in that I’m more confident in giving my lessons to my students, along with I tried to not be as scared in-front of them.

During clinicals there was a lot going on: new employees, new residents and residents leaving. I found clinicals completely different than being in the classroom and learning from mannequins. However, I did find it eye opening of what a rehabilitation center is like.

This reflective essay will discuss three skills that I have leant and developed during my placement. The three skills that I will be discussing in this essay are bed-bath, observing a corpse being prepared for mortuary and putting canulla and taking it out. These skills will be discussed in this essay using (Gibb’s, 1988) model. I have chosen to use Gibb’s model because I find this model easier to use and understand to guide me through my reflection process. Moreover, this model will be useful in breaking the new skills that I have developed into a way that I can understand. This model will also enable me to turn my experiences into knowledge that I can refer to in the future when facing same or similar situations. Gibbs model seems to be

Over the past ten weeks we learnt a lot in this course. The clinical especially enhanced my assessment skills, diagnoses, and treatment of various illnesses with the help of my preceptor and Dr. Jules feedback. Both the course material and the clinical gave me a better understanding of the patient's health condition, as well as coming up with the most appropriate and effective health care strategies that focuses on primary care management of both acute and chronic health conditions in adult and geriatric population. The SOAP notes and Med U as well as the provided disease management algorithms were helpful in putting everything together while utilizing evidence based treatment plan focusing more on health promotion, health restoration, and