Reflection: Childbirth and Vital Signs Essay

In correspondence with the Nursing and Midwifery Council, Code of conduct (2012) I will reflect upon an episode of communication in which I feel I had an impact upon within a women’s postpartum care. I will reflect in the style of Gibbs (1988) as I feel it was more analytical for my specific communication episode as it considered feelings compared to the reflective cycle of Schὂn (1983) reflection in practice and reflection on practice.

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.

Burns, S. Bulman, C. Palmer, A. (1997) Reflective Practice in Nursing - The growth of the professional practitioner. London: Blackwell Science.

Being a midwife does not only defined by assisting women in childbirth. The general dictionary definition are the misconception of how people view midwives. Being a midwife means to be ‘with women’ and this leads the construction of the midwifery philosophy, Page (2006) 5 steps and Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA) competency standards, in order to provide the best women centred care (Australia Collage of Midwives, 2017). This essay will cover a constructive overview of what Page (2006) 5 steps of being a midwife means, it will also defined what women centred care is and emphasis on the importance it has for the woman. Understanding Page (2006) 5 steps and women centred care helped build the pathway for midwifery philosophy to correlate with NMBA competency standard in order to support midwifery practice. For

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”.

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

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.

Whilst there are many notion for reflection the main goal is for health professionals to learn, grow and develop through practice. There are a number of models of reflection to help engage in the process of reflection. In this entry I would be using the Driscoll framework of reflection

Reflection can be defined as “a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse and evaluate and so inform learning from practice.”(Reid, 1993) It is an important factor when working within any health profession and midwifery is certainly no exception. Schon (1991) defines a reflective practitioner as “someone who learns by reflecting on current experience and applies that learning to future practice.” Reflection allows midwives to grow and develop professionally as well as personally (Kirkham, 1994) and can guide her into moulding her sphere practice in a positive way to benefit the women she is caring for (Church & Raynor, 2000). It also allows midwives to continue with lifelong learning and put theory to

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

From the lecture, I learned that pregnancy can be a very unique experience for different types of people and can surely be a psychological challenge. With this this new understanding, it became easy to recognize why midwives could end up being very beneficial for expecting mothers, all the way throughout the process of pregnancy. This is where I became particularly interested because besides the midwives job having the women understand the process of pregnancy, it was their job to help the women attain a certain level of peace and calm, all the way throughout the process, as they have someone that they come to trust right up until the end. Having the women in the mindset that it will be a good experience is vital in making it be so in actuality.

Furthermore, Sudden Infant Death is growing across the world and I believe that it will be wise and good to know which countries are affected by this sudden deaths that affects babies. According the Nation Master website research, Angolo is the country with the high rate of Sudden Infant Death. The countries followed by Angolo all the way to the tenth position are mostly African countries. When I saw the rankings I wasn't really surprised that African countries would be on t top of the list. Just think about the struggles and obstacles that most pregnant women face in their native countries in Africa. Just think about the health care services that pregnant women in other countries receive in other countries excluding countries in Africa. Since most women in African countries don’t receive proper health care, they don't really know and understand how to give birth to a healthy

Using Gibbs (1998, cited in Bulman and Schutz, 2013, P. 232) model of reflection I will analyse the case and evaluate my learning experiences. To comply with the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2008), I have changed the names of all the individuals mentioned in order to maintain confidentiality.

Globally, estimated 1.5 billion women were of childbearing age (15 to 45 years old) in 2011; 26% (310.62 million) of them covered by India only. Among 1.5 billion, 210 million become pregnant every year; of which; 86.66% (accounting as 182 million) of in developing world and remaining 13.33% (28 million) was in developed countries. 1, 2 Similarly 139.65 million births were in 2009 in the world and 26.92 million only in India.2 Pregnancy and childbirth are special events in women’s lives. This can be a time of great hope and joyful anticipation3. Though pregnancy and childbirth are a natural and usual phenomenon, these events put every woman at risk of complications and it directly/indirectly affect to the growth and development of the infant. Most maternal and child deaths occur during late pregnancy and the first year of the child’s life respectively.4