My Clinical Experience

Discuss a clinical experience in which you had to incorporate one or more learning styles such as visual, kinesthetic, and auditory. Explain the outcomes and how you created an effective learning experience.

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 clinical experiences, there have been quite a few circumstances I have been placed in that have remained with me whether good or bad. All of them have been learning experiences for me whether it is how to improve and to do better next time from a mistake, for me to learn that this is or is not how a patient should be treated, how to handle family situations, and many others. One experience that I was able to participate in that will remain with me because I had not experienced this before was during my critical care rotation in the fall of 2015. This patient was dying and we were implementing comfort care for him.

Reflective practice in nursing is the process where we examine our nursing ability’s and practice in order to critically think and analyze the way we work and think about the views of others in our practice, what we could have done and we could have achieved a greater result by doing this also allows us as nurses to include best practice and use our own judgment in patient care to show the factors that either aid and hinder nurse to patient relationship. (Lowenstein, Bradshaw and Fuszard, 2001) described reflecting in nursing practice “the nurse must first come to understand what he or she defines as ideal practice”.

Reflection is defined by Howatson-Jones (2013), as “a way of examining your experience in order to look for the possibility of other explanations and alternative approaches to doing things” (p. 6). The practice of reflection is important for numerous reasons. As stated by Hargreaves and Page (2013), reflections promote good practice and in the occurrence of a difficult or challenging situation, they can help to identify where things went wrong and how to improve the outcome for future incidents. As identified by Jasper, Rosser and Mooney (2013), reflection offers benefits to both the patient and the practitioner. Practitioners are more likely to avoid routine practice, continuously develop their knowledge and identify faults to improve on. Patients are more likely to receive higher standards of safety and better quality of care

Reflection is an important tool for all health care practitioners. It can improve our skills and help us understand the choices we make while in practice. Williams (2001) states that “Reflective learning involves assessment and re-assessment of assumptions and critical reflection occurs whenever

Developing my holistic nursing practice or looking at who I have become as a nurse today has been a journey that has helped defined who I am today. When I look back at when I originally became a nurse over 16 years ago, I am proud of who I have become. When I finished nursing school and began my job as a new nurse I thought I had all the tools to be the best nurse I could be. I understood the nursing process, I recognized the skills needed at the bedside to be a nurse, and I felt I had great nursing documentation skills. Soon I learned that wasn’t all of what I needed.

This clinical experience took place at Peyton Elementary School and Prairie Heights Elementary School. Kamille, Ben and I were to teach hand hygiene, covering your cough and brushing your teeth to three Pre-K classes. First we developed a lesson plan and teaching aid for our students. Then, we gathered supplies such as spray bottles, dye, subject specific coloring sheet and a dinosaur with large teeth and tooth brush. Kids Rock dentistry in Colorado Springs was nice enough to borrow us the dinosaur and also gave us activity books for the kids. When we arrived at Peyton Elementary School at 0800, we noticed it was a very nice school. We met the school nurse at the office where we signed in. She showed us to classroom where the children

Gustaffson and Fagerberg point out that reflective practice has relevance for clinical practice as by understanding the contents of nurses’ reflections, it is also possible to understand the advantages of reflective practice and how and when such measures should be used by the nurses for further professional development.

For the purpose of this essay, I have selected Gibbs (1988) Reflective Learning Cycle to reflect on an aspect of individual professional practice, which requires development in preparation for my role as a Registered Nurse. Gibbs (1988) Model of Reflection provides a clear description of a situation, analysis of feelings, evaluation of the experience, conclusion, and action plan to make sense of the experience to examine what you would do if the situation happens again.

Reflective practice in nursing is considered an important aspect to nursing. Durgahee ( 1997) defines reflective practice as a process of learning and teaching professional maturity through the critical analysis of experience, whilst John ( 2009) up to date explanation of reflection is learning through our everyday experience towards realising one vision of desirable practice as a lived reality.

In recent years, reflection and reflective practice have become well-known term with in the health care arena. They are words that have been debated and discussed with in the health care setting (Tony and Sue 2006). Reflective practice is essential for nurses, as nurses are responsible for providing care to the best of their ability to patients and their families (NMC, 2008). Reid (1993) states reflection is a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice. Johns (1995) notes that reflection enables practitioners to assess, understand and learn through their experience. Reflective practice, therefore, offers nurses an opportunity to review their decisions and

Personal reflection in nursing is essential and critical as it allows for continuous development and re-assessment of skills whilst working within a health care setting (Reflective practice: a tool to enhance professional practice 2011, pp.1-3). Personal reflection is important as reflective practice allows for the ability for one to reflect and examine their actions and experiences which overall will increase and enhance their clinical knowledge, as well as developing and improving their practice (Reflective practice: a tool to

Comparing my clinical experiences from last semester to this semester, I would say that I have already experienced more this semester than I would have at this time last semester. Even though I am doing LNA work while incorporating RN aspects, I feel the work that we are doing this semester is more RN aspect based rather than LNA work. Clinical was my favorite part of last semester, and it is still my favorite part of the semester. Over the past couple of weeks at Riverside, I have had numerous new experiences, including following a nurse, following the wound care nurse, and going in on my day off to follow both the wound nurse and the nurse practitioner of the facility.

The Royal College of Nursing defines reflection as the process of thinking deeply with the purpose of understanding (RCN 2013). Reflection is a way people recollect, think and evaluate their knowledge which is a vital part of learning. (Boud et al cited in Royal College of Nursing). Reflection allows us to be conscious of any form of discrimination. It enables learning from mistakes and prevents future occurrence (RCN 2013). In addition, Jasper et al (2013) looks at reflection as a way professionals learn through various experiences in their role. They also went further to say, for development to happen in our roles as professionals, there is the need for continuous process of building our knowledge.