OB Intrapartum Reflection: My Experience As A Nurse

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.

In the context of professional practices reflection is defined as the examination of personal thoughts and actions (David, 2004). In this essay I am reflecting on an incident that happened in my earlier years of working as a professional nurse. The incident I am sharing and the subsequent learning I have gained by reflecting it helped me in the later years of my nursing career.

During the semester, I was successful at completing the objective, of collaborating with peers, other professionals and families plan and implement culturally competent nursing care to childbearing families. I improved my skill of communicating with patients whose culture was different than mine; I did this by picking patients with a unique culture. For example, I would pick to work with a patient that didn’t speak the same language as me. This helped me with communicating with different groups and cultures. For example, if a mother or their family member spoke a different language than me, I wouldn’t not joke around with them as they have a different culture, and my joke may be translated differently or negatively. Unfortunately, that barrier

Working as a Case Manager (CM) for a Medicaid-based Health Insurance has brought me in contact with patients of varied cultures, languages and races. As a CM For Metro Plus Health Plan, my responsibility is to teach High Risk pregnant women about their diseases, encourage them to stay in care with their Primary Care Physician/Obstetricians, explain the importance of taking their medications as prescribed, and adhering to all their providers plan of care, with the goal of encouraging these patient’s to become responsible and active participants in their own care. I have been able to directly observe as a clinician, how cultural competence can positively impact not only the relationship between my patients and I, but also the level of care I am able to provide.

Cultural sensitivity and awareness is a very important aspect of modern healthcare. It works well if staff members are aware of another cultural viewpoint and able to integrate it while providing care (Burkhardt & Nathaniel, 2014). Nursing staff, in particular, spend more time with patients than any other provider in the health care system. Therefore, they should pay close attention when attending to patients born in different countries, raised in in different cultures or patients whose views are distinctly different from the caregiver’s perspective.

I had such a great day at clinical yesterday. I was finally able to see a vaginal delivery and that entire process. When I arrived in the morning, the mom had just received Cytotec, to help induce labor and ripen her cervix. She was forty-one weeks and zero. Around ten thirty in the morning, she asked for her epidural to manage her pain. We bolused her with fifteen hundred milliliters of lactated ringers to prevent hypotension. Shane was the certified registered nurse anesthesiologist (CRNA) who administered the epidural. It was very cool watching him administer all the needed pain relief medication before he administered the epidural to make sure that it would be placed in the epidural space in the spine. Then administered a small test dose, waited till a few blood pressures were taken, then administered the remaining about through an epidural pump. After the epidural was administered, I was able to administer her foley catheter. I was so happy that I was finally able to place one. I learned a few tricks from Maura (my nurse) as well. She taught me that it was easier to take the top off of the lubricant syringe and to place the tip of the foley inside of the syringe, that way it will not wiggle around and become unsterile. She also taught me to grab from the bottom of the labia and pull up, that way it ensures that I will have a clear entrance to

Don’t you ever want to know what it feels like to be rushing around your team yelling and encourage the mother to push her hardest, yelling their vital sounds? Well some people do, some people want to feel that adrenaline when they hear a woman is coming in and she’s about to give birth to her child. How would you feel when the family comes back to say thank you for saving their child after a difficult labor?

Giving birth to a baby is the most amazing and miraculous experiences for parents and their loved ones. Every woman’s birth story is different and full of joy. Furthermore, the process from the moment a woman knows that she’s pregnant to being in the delivering room is very critical to both her and the newborn baby. Prenatal care is extremely important and it can impact greatly the quality of life of the baby. In this paper, the topic of giving birth will be discussed thoroughly by describing the stories of two mothers who gave birth in different decades and see how their prenatal cares are different from each other with correlation of the advancement of modern medicine between four decades.

Reflective practice is often defined as when practitioners engage in a continuous cycle of self observation and self evaluation in order to understand their own actions and reactions they prompt in themselves and in learners (Brookfield, 1995; Thiel, 1999). The goal is not necessarily to address a specific problem or question defined at the outset, as in practitioner research but to observe and refine practice in general on an ongoing basis. (Cunningham 2001). Reflection on practice is a key skill for nurses. Engaging in regular reflection allows practitioners to manage the personal and professional impact of addressing their patients’ fundamental health and wellbeing needs daily (Oelofsen, 2012)

There are very specific special certifications needed to become a labor and delivery nurse that are available through the National Certification Corporation (NCC). Labor and delivery nurses are RNs who provide care to women during and after pregnancy. They take care of newborns and work closely with patients’ families and other health care providers.

The Royal College of Nursing (2015) (RCN), believe professional values are to be followed to create the evolving nurse, with Advocacy highlighted as a fundamental feature. The central thesis of this paper is to reflect my understanding of advocacy against my own clinical practice as a first-year student nurse. The analysis to reflect on this clinical practice will use Driscolls (2007) ‘The What?’ Model, which questions the stages of the learning cycles to reflect on, the incident, what has been learned and the outcome on both current and future practice. Patient Confidentiality will be protected and respected throughout this reflection as described in The Nursing and Midwifery code (2015) (NMC), and The Data Protection Act (1988), all personal information including the patient’s name is considered privileged information and be dealt in a way which does not comprise the patient’s dignity or infringe upon their right to privacy.

The couple’s first experience of having newborn babies came unexpected amidst severe warnings of a hurricane at 5:20 AM; the mother’s water had broken and the baby was being born 13 weeks early. The delivery was high risk, not only due to the premature nature of the newborns, but also because the pregnancy was multiple-birth (twins). As this is a high-stress moment for any future parent, and ones with complex situations in particular, the overall service experience should be as easy, informational, safe, and stress-free as possible.

For hundred of years, women have wrestled with their womanhood, bodies, and what it means to be a woman in our society. Being a woman comes with a wonderful and empowering responsibility--giving birth. What sets us aside from other countries is that the process and expectations of giving birth has changed in our society; coming from midwifery, as it has always been since the early times, to hospitals where it is now expected to give birth at. Midwifery was a common practice in delivering babies in

The author is a nurse in a level two trauma facility in a community of approximately fifty thousand people in Oregon. The community is a college-town surrounded by a large agricultural area. There is a minimal ethnic diversity within the community. The diversity present occurs mainly from internationally students and faculty from the college. There is a growing population of women who desire low interventional births in the community. The author has worked on the labor and delivery unit of the hospital for the last 14 years. The hospital is the only one in the area to offer trial of labor services to women who have previously undergone a cesarean section. The unit on average experiences around 1000 deliveries annually.

I will never forget the moment my labor began, the moment that marked that step in my journey into motherhood. I can remember everything about it so clearly. My mom, fiancé, and I woke up early Friday morning to make our way to Western Missouri Medical Center. I stood in front of the mirror looking at my belly knowing it would be my last time standing in that bathroom with my baby inside of me still. It was a bittersweet moment that I cherished as long as I possibly could. I was set to be induced that morning and very excited, yet a little bit nervous. I had no idea what to expect. I’d been waiting a very long 37 weeks to finally meet this precious human that had been growing inside me. I had ideas of what he might look like, and what the experience might be like, however nothing could have prepared me for what was in store over the next few days.