Reflective Practice Essay examples

Before I first started my essay, I looked and noticed that I had to do a documented research essay. I then had to come up with a topic for my essay. I chose ADHA for my topic, then I have done some research on this topic. I had to find all the information I wanted to know about this topic I had chosen to write about. I had to write down everything I could find about this topic, so I could write my essay. With this topic, there is a lot of web pages that have a lot of information that will help you get everything you need.

Reflective practice is important because it accurately assesses the need of each service user. It is essential that all care workers become familiar with reflective practice as our profession depends on shared support, care workers.

Giving myself time to read up on nursing experiences, attending more clinical practice labs, participating and watching these duties in the health care setting will allow me to develop a secure level of confidence the next time that this type of situation may occur. Staying in the room allowed me to experience the feeling of support while looking past social norms and how they are challenged. I met my personal values, and I believe that one should respect another person`s privacy. This understanding allowed me to be there to support the resident during her time of need. In the article `starting out` by Jane Schulz, a nursing student shares her experience of helping her colleague assist an elderly patient with daily care. Observing the compassion and care between nurse and patient from fundamental tasks, she took away a valued lesson of how our support and caring methods affect an individual. My relation to this story allowed me to reflect on the effects my care and supporting actions had on our patient.

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.

This essay will demonstrate an understanding of the theory of reflective practice within healthcare and nursing. Furthermore, the essay will identify and analyse the different models of reflective practice, the effectiveness of the models and how healthcare professionals can apply this within their profession. Also, the barriers that may prevent a healthcare professional from reflecting will be discussed in this essay and how it will impact the quality of care delivered to patients.

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”.

Experience is sometimes regarded as the best teacher. Many things can be learned in a classroom and by formal academic study, but many cannot. Reflective practice is a form approach to learning through experience. Reflective practice is a lifelong learning process to promote continual development of the nurse. Reflective writing practice helps the nurse to gain knowledge and to challenge their own ideas and concepts. The idea of reflective practice is not only to see what happened, but to see the situation through new eyes, eyes that can help in personal growth and to develop ways to respond differently in the future.

During my clinical competency placement, I was working on a surgical ward when a registered nurse on duty asked me to assist Mr. A with his shower. This incident happened on the fifth day of my clinical practice. He was a dementia patient and had undergone right knee total joint replacement. She also informed me that the patient did not like too many people in his room because of his dementia. When I went into his room, his wife was there with him. I talked to the patient about having a shower and getting dressed to look smart and he agreed to have a shower. The patient got out of the bed and walked to the bathroom and sat on the shower chair to have his shower. Then I asked his wife if I needs to stay with him to assist with shower, she said she can help him as she was taking care for him at home since he has been diagnosed with dementia. Therefore, I left the patient with his wife to help with his shower and told her to ring the bell if she needs any help. After some time I left the room, the wife rang the bell. As soon as I entered the room, I heard him shouting at his wife and she started crying and left the hospital. So I had to stay with him. He was very capable of washing himself and I just had to help him wash his back as he requested. After he had washed, I asked him if he was ready to get out of the bath, he started shouting at me.

The focus of professional behavior is the therapeutic patient relationship and, requires protection of the patient modesty, privacy and autonomy amongst other patient rights (NCSBN, 2013). When a therapeutic relationship is achieved patient and family members perceive care to be better due to the appeal to their emotion being positive. Additionally, patients and family members described primarily receiving excellent nursing care when relationships were therapeutic (Jeffs et al., 2013). Maintaining a therapeutic relationship between a patient and nurse requires being cognizant of the role of the nurse and being involved appropriately to meet optimal health goals without crossing boundaries, while maintaining a professional image. Nurse’s involvement

With respect to my feelings, for the first few minutes after the incident, I struggled over the decision to inform my mentor about what I had witnessed or otherwise. I found it particularly challenging because as a first year student on my very first clinical placement, I had little or no clinical experience yet. I can relate this feeling to Carper’s (1978) fundamental pattern of knowing in nursing in which “during the personal way of knowing, the practitioner responds to situations in terms of their own mental models, vision,

As nurses, it is hard at times to remain neutral and not favor one patient

The ability to become reflective in practice has become a necessary skill for health professionals. This is to ensure that health professionals are continuing with their daily learning and improving their practice. Reflective practice plays a big part in healthcare today and is becoming increasingly noticed.

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

One of the hardest parts of being a nurse is not becoming too attached to the given patient at hand. Although it is incredibly important to have a good relationship with patients, for you are the main person interacting with them on a day-to-day basis, it is also essential to create an emotional distance. According to an article regarding doctor, nurse, and patient relationships, “Despite the need for nurses to be able to emotionally relate to their patients, being able to maintain a certain distance or detachment from their patients is also considered an important part of the relationship because it allows nurses to keep an objective point-of-view” (Murata). This idea can also be seen within Florence Nightingale’s fundamentals of nursing, for she too, stresses the idea of being aware of a patients’ conditions. In order to keep the professionalism of a nurse, they must learn to balance out their emotional sides and focus more on the job at hand. With this in mind, nurses must not let toxic feelings toward a patient get in the way of their work. No matter if a patient is rude or hard to work with, all health care experts must remain professional and handle the situation as etiquettely as possible. As said before, without becoming too attached to a patient, it is critically important to provide a patient with the best care and respect while they are under your responsibility as a nurse. It is not