Reflection Paper In Nursing

This essay will discuss a clinical skill in which I have become competent in practicing as a student nurse.

My practice in nursing has been influenced by various elements within my career. I have come to embrace that nursing is a learning process and one should expect constructive criticism. When I began as a “novice,” I found myself nervous in some clinical situations but I managed to remain focused on

Hello Students, my name is Teresa Damien MS, APRN-BC. I have been a registered nurse for over a decade and currently practice as a psychiatric mental health nurse practitioner at an academic institution clinically focused in addiction psychiatry. I have worked in multiple areas of nursing over my career prior to mental health that include medical-surgical nursing, respiratory nursing, hospice nursing, home care pedicatric nursing, and nursing education.

As I near the finish with my journey with Aspen, I realize what I have achieved. I have improved my decision-making skills, attained knowledge in leadership and managerial skills. Also, I have improved my communication skills for leadership positions, increased knowledge in the organizations functioning, and increased knowledge in quality. Therefore, we will review some of the areas, which my goals were achieved.

I am writing to the Texas Board of Nursing with a written explanation of the events that occurred on the night of October 1, 2011 in Saline, Michigan. On this night I made an irresponsible decision to consume alcohol while being 17 years of age with a group of peers before attending my senior homecoming dance. A police officer that was chaperoning the dance noticed a smell of alcohol lingering with our group and pulled us aside. After being questioned and breathalysed, our parents / guardians were contacted to come pick us up from the school.

I can remember serving in the Air Force as a nurse and working with the chief of nursing. During my training period, things just seemed so difficult and hard for me to grasp under such a stressful environment. The chief of medical was very detail oriented and she would always pushed us to think outside of the box. We would go through different mock code scenarios as if we were out in the battlefield for two weeks. If we did not respond to the level of her expectations, she would make us redo the mock code scenario over again. There were many days in which we felt frustrated, giving up and crying. In the end, we realized that the chief of nursing was just trying to build our character, instill confidence and prepare us for future of being in a war zone.

As a first semester nursing student my journey into developing nursing skills has just begun,

As a member of the Somerset County School Nurse Association, I learned about the meeting by email from the coordinator of the meeting, Carolyn Seracka.

The nurse I followed just had one patient and that patient’s family was not present when was there. From what I understood in the nurse-to-nurse handoff was that the patient’s family is rarely there and the nurses never know when the family is going to visit next. It sounded like the mother was very young and did not have a way to get to the hospital from their home, which was more than one hour away. The off going nurse also said that they were trying to get the loaned breast pump back from the mother but they were having trouble doing so because the mother did not have enough money to buy her own breast pump. Even though the mother wasn’t there when I was, I could get a very good sense of the stressors going on in her life due to the baby being in the NICU.

The following reflection demonstrates my awareness for my own cultural influences. Through the cultural lenses of a student nurse and a tennis member. They have impacted the way I view others and is a guidance to my bicultural professional health care relationship.

For my reflection paper I interviewed a coworker from each of my jobs. I interviewed JM, an EMT for a private EMS company, and I interviewed DS, an emergency room nurse. JM has been in the field for four years and has worked in the city and in a more rural area. Even though he has not spent many years in the field, he has noticed changes just the same as more seasoned veterans. DS has been in the field for 20 years and has worked in rough urban emergency departments and small city emergency departments. She has seen many changes over the years and was thrilled to be interviewed for this class assignment. I picked these two for my candidates hoping to receive different input from each. I was surprised to find that the two had similar views on the topic.

As most college students would tell you, each day during a semester starts to become a routine. We wake up, get ready, go to class, spend a few hours studying at the library, and take a break occasionally to keep up with our social lives. To me this was the norm for most days, except for the Fridays that I volunteered at the Trauma Emergency Room. On one gloomy day in February, most of the research staff was out sick. As a result, I was given the responsibility of going up to the Trauma Room alone in order to screen patients for the various clinical studies that we were conducting. As I walked up the steps, I told myself “You can do this, you’ve been volunteering here for a few months now and you know the eligibility criteria like you know the back of your hand.” Pushing the heavy doors open I walked in and took in the few minutes of calm and silence before the patient came in. As I stood there observing, my pager buzzed repeatedly. Within in the next 20 minutes, 12 different victims of a 4 car MVC, ranging from young innocent 3 year olds to older women, were brought in along with their worried loved ones by their side. As the doctors and nurses rushed to check the injuries of each patient I stood there listening to the various medical terms called out some that I recognized and others that I noted to check on later I felt completely helpless since as research students we weren’t allowed to touch patients. As an observer of the situation I yearned to be able to do something

As a registered nurse on my floor I love providing care to my patients but sometimes it can become difficult to not be able to make clinical decisions for them. One day while performing my morning assessments on my patient I realized his right elbow was swollen. I compared it to his left elbow and my inner-self told me that this wasn’t normal. I paged the attending MD and made him aware of the situation and I recommended he order an Ultrasound of the right elbow just to be safe. He denied and said the patient is being discharged home today and he will follow up with him outpatient. I then decided to contact the Family Nurse Practitioner covering this patient and she immediately came to the floor to assess him. After her assessment I told her what my recommendation was, and she agreed. She clarified everything with the patient and made sure he understood her reasoning, put the order in and contacted the MD to hold off on the patients discharge. At this moment I realized that being a Family Nurse Practitioner was my calling. Becoming a Family Nurse Practitioner will allow me to take charge of my patient’s health, implement care plans and motivate the patients to make long-term changes that will benefit their health. The Family Nurse Practitioner at my hospital was an advocate for the patient swollen arm which prevented him from going home with elbow bursitis. As a Family Nurse Practitioner, I will have the opportunity to work alongside with Physicians which allows me to

The nursing profession has been around for a very long time. Through many changes and reforms, it has drastically evolved into the nursing profession we have today. Nurses have an important role within the healthcare industry in the treatment and medical care of the sick. These trusted healthcare professionals continue to make up the largest majority of the healthcare field, as well as the fastest growing occupation. Nursing is a job that allows people to not only care for the sick but also to experience, learn and further their interest in the human body. This course has definitely provided me an insight to the roots of the profession I would like to pursue. I think it is important to know the history of nursing to understand fully on the problems that are affecting the profession. I believe that we cannot effectively address important issues without a foundation of historical knowledge. In other words, by examining the nursing history, I will be able to appreciate my important role as a nurse in the healthcare system. The topics I will be including in my reflection are the works of Florence Nightingale, the affects of World War II, the challenges of Filipinos aspiring to be nurses, and excerpts in Chapter 10 of “A History of American Nursing.”

Furthering nursing research is essential, as it forms the basis for evidence-based practice in healthcare today. With this in mind, developing the skills to critically appraise research articles is of the utmost importance in order to determine the relevance of research findings for clinical practice. As I pursue a doctorate degree in nursing practice, I am reminded of the necessity of these skills. Thus, in the following paragraphs, I will reflect on the research goals I developed at the beginning of the Critique and Design of Nursing Research course, and will discuss my views on the role of the graduate nurse in regard to