Reflective Practice

* establishes a system of praise and constructive criticism - rewards and improvement; grows with the organisation

Bringing these two concepts together is like having an umbrella during a rain storm; individually they are helpful and necessary but together they are the perfect combination. Caring is that feeling deep down that drives nurses to strive for and promote the notion of human flourishing. To help patients achieve the best possible health that they can. It is important to utilize nursing skills of honesty, taking risks, critically thinking, compassion, creativity, and caring (MacCulloch, 2011). To care is to feel and understand what your patient is going through influencing action to help the patient achieve their best possible self, and then allow both the patient and one’s self to grow in every aspect of life; to flourish inside the body and as a member of the community.

Human caring is what sets nursing apart from other professions. As Watson (1998) stated, “care and love are the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mysterious of cosmic forces: they comprise the primal universal psychic energy. Caring is the essence of nursing and the most central and unifying focus for nursing practice” (p. 32-33). It is important to establish a good nurse-patient relationship in order to create a healing environment that would meet patient’s needs on all levels including physical, mental/emotional and spiritual, promote recovery, maintain health, and create positive outcomes. Jean Watson emphasized the importance of human

The art of human caring is one of the most essential parts of the nursing profession. Caring is not something that you learn to do, but something that is within you. In nursing, it is important to know what kind of nurse you want to be as well as the care you intend to provide to your patients. The patient is the center of nursing, and it is your responsibility to make sure they are receiving the best care that they can receive. One of the most important things is to be able to set aside personal beliefs and morals in order to provide patient centered care. The way that you approach and care for a patient is either going to make or break the effect of the care you will be implementing to the patient.

What is a clinical exemplar? It is a story based on a real patient’s situation and a RN’s practice in clinical setting. Having a clinical experience it is an opportunity for any student nurse not only practicing skills and using theoretical knowledge, but also learning by doing and reflecting on experiences during the placement (Jones, 2013). This experience comes through exploring, developing, questioning, learning and reflecting at the early stage of personal and professional development. Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle is one of the models of reflective writing that will be used in this clinical exemplar.

When my mother woke up she needed the bandages on her face changed. She pressed the nurse call button many times. She set there for around 2 hours before she finally let me go find a nurse for her. As i went to go find the nurse station i seen multiple nurses standing around talking. I got one's attention and she was rude because I interrupted her story. The nurse finally came and changed the bandage. She did not ask my mom how she was feeling or if there was anything that she could help with. A couple hours later we realized her morphine pump was not working. When we notified someone it took over 6 hours to get someone to fix the pump.

Reflective practice is constantly changing as it adds in the learning gained from experiences. Reflective practice links events together and compares what is already known and make a decisions on the basis of this comparison. Reflective practice helps nurses to become expert practitioners due to the fact it operates from a deep understanding of the total events. Reflective practice could also be beneficial for patients and service users as it gives better standards of patient safety and is focused on individual and also evidence based care derived from their needs.

Kristen M. Swanson’s Caring Theory is the solution in bridging the gap between nursing practice and theory. It offers an explanation of the links between patient well-being and the caring process (Tonges & Ray, 2011). Swanson explained that nurses should be able to demonstrate that they care about their patients, and that caring about their wellbeing is as important as their patients’ current medical problem (Tonges & Ray, 2011).

The Oxford Dictionary defines caring as the work or practice of looking after, as well as, displaying kindness and concern for those who are unable to care for themselves, especially on account of age or illness. Meanwhile, Avant and Walker (2011) terms caring as an interpersonal process which requires an emotional commitment coupled with willingness to fulfill combined responsibilities and to be trustworthy enough to act on behalf of a person. In essence, it helps in developing great interpersonal relationship between the nurses and the patients in the healthcare centers in a systematic scientific manner.

making Practice-Based Learning work Reflection on PRACTICE A resource commissioned by the Making Practice Based Learning Work project, an educational development project funded through FDTL Phase 4 Project Number 174/02 and produced by staff from the University of Ulster. www.practicebasedlearning.org Author Patricia McClure School of Health Sciences, University of Ulster www.practicebasedlearning.org contents Reflection on Practice 02

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.

My reflective clinical practice experience was based on my eight weeks placement in an acute mental health ward in a hospital. I was not sure of what to expect because I have never worked or placed in an acute ward and this was my second placement. Before starting my placement, I visited the ward and was inducted around the ward. This gave me a bit of confidence and reassurance about working in an acute ward.

A load of research has been done on learning and reflective practice and its effectiveness on the practitioners and one of the first people to research reflective Practice was Donald Schon in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” in 1983. Schon was an influential writer on reflection and had two main ways of identifying reflection and they were reflection in action and reflection on action.

Professional knowledge is no longer viewed as just consisting of a standardised, explicit and fixed knowledge base. It is now seen as knowledge which exists in use, is ethical in its use and is changed by experience.

During my first semester student clinical rotation, I was introduced to patient, 76 year old AB who was being treated at an assisted living facility. She was a wonderful patient and someone I immediately connected with. AB had been medically diagnosed with COPD and displayed all the classic physical signs of the disease such as wheezing, deliberate breathing, severe shortness of breath and nutritional deficit. She was my first patient as a student nurse and the first person I was able to complete a health assessment and nursing care plan for. I recognized early on that AB was special and someone who would be a great person to communicate with. With the initial assessment she was a little scared, but