Underserved Reflection

As an economically disadvantaged, minority student who ventured out of a small, closed-minded town, I have developed a passion to serve the underserved. Throughout my life, I have been associated with and witnessed the consequences of being a minority. For example, with 1% of my high school identifying

At the beginning of my freshman year, I joined the future educators’ club. I wanted to be a teacher, and after hearing about a full-ride scholarship to St. Francis that was being offered to members, I signed up. Although I was the youngest person in the club, and there were only about five of us, I continued attending. A few meetings passed, and I asked about the opportunity. This moment exposed me to the other side of the racial spectrum. Unfortunately, I was told that I was ineligible for the scholarship because I was Caucasian. In order to qualify, I had to be a minority. I suddenly realized that although there is a vast amount of racial injustice, there are also opportunities for minorities that are not offered to whites. Even though I might earn the same grades as someone of a different ethnicity, I was not given the chance to participate. In my mind, that doesn’t

Reflection is a major factor in "developing self-awareness" to improve services provided to everyone around me, this is to develop my own understanding in realising the good and bad made previously. Moving forward with a better understanding, as well as rectifying the mistake whilst recognizing the good points, (Horton-Deutsch and Sherwood, 2008).

I do not recall learning about reflective practice in my undergraduate studies. Reflective practice according to Barbour (2013), “is the cyclic process of internally examining and exploring an issue of concern, triggered by an experience, which creates and clarifies meaning in terms of self, existing knowledge, and experience; resulting in a changed conceptual perceptive and practice” (p. 7). According to Barbour (2013), reflective process has many positive outcomes to help guide the nurse to become an expert nurse that can make on the spot decisions that do not interrupt patient care. I feel that reflective practice would have been beneficial to help guide me from a student nurse to a practicing nurse with critical thinking skills.

I grew up in a time of great social strife. My wife and I were born before World War II, long before the civil rights movement, yet I was raised in a household where racism did not exist. My mother, an activist far ahead of her time, stressed upon me the importance of diversity and equality. She often welcomed into our home people from all different walks of life. As a child, I experienced and learned diversity from my own dinner table. This way of thinking carried with me throughout my life, from my travels in Africa and Southeast Asia, my career as an officer in the United States military, and my experience as a university

This semester I learned a lot about writing in English 151. It has been a roller coaster ride with these essays for me this semester. I learned step by step how to write a good essay and how to have your readers be engaged in what you’re trying to tell them. Each essay I did has taught me something valuable I can take to the next level of English. I feel as if as the semester went by I did not take my writing that seriously and that reflected in my grades I received in each essay. It made me a better student and writer and it will reflect next semester. In this essay, I will reflect on what I learned throughout this semester that you should apply in your writing when you begin English 151.

The purpose of this assignment is to discuss the contribution of reflective practice for clinical nursing. Reflection has been defined as a way for individuals to “capture their experience, think about it, mull it over and evaluate” (Boud et al 1985: 19)

For the last six weeks in both mental and acute setting, I have reflected on events that I had met in each week. Now, I am going to identify essential personal learning outcomes from those events and will include personal awareness of strengths and weaknesses. Among the different models of reflection, I will use the Gibbs model of reflection which entails six stages such as description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, action plan.

Growing up I’ve always been surrounded by minorities including my family. Seeing their constant struggle led me to create the false idea that I would not amount to anything no matter how hard I tried due to invisible boundaries. It put me in a daze at some point in life until I matured and realized I am the only one holding myself back; so I climbed back up out of the hole I had dug for myself. It took a lot out of me but when that happened I was able to see the determination in my relative’s eyes and the refreshing charisma of my peers who knew what they wanted in life. I was so used to being looked down upon what I loved to do; I was looked down upon even by those who I loved calling my aspirations childish. My motivation nearly disappearing

While working on something it is hard to notice the progress that you have made. During all this semester I kept asking myself one and the same question: how is my writing improving? Now, after a year of persistent work and perfection of my writing skills, I can answer it. This course was really useful and it has helped me to improve not only my writing, but also my searching skills and the level of my language proficiency in general. Nevertheless, there are still some weak points waiting to be improved.

Advanced practice nursing (APN) can be loosely defined as an area of nursing in which nurses are required to practice at an advanced level in a specific area of interest. APN extends the boundaries of nursing’s scope of practice and contributes to nursing knowledge, and the development of the profession (Canadian Nurses Association, 2008). In order to become an APN, the nurse must obtain a master’s or doctoral degree from an accredited university in an area of concentration designated for advanced practice nursing. According to Joel (2009), there are currently four major groups of APNs: certified registered nurse anesthetist, certified nurse midwives, clinical nurse specialists, and nurse practitioners. APN focus on

In the final days of this semester, one tends to look back at the work done over a difficult and long three months. In the case of this English composition class, reflecting on completed essays has allowed me to analyze the development of my writing over the semester. Although this semester consisted of only five essays, it has become apparent to me that my writing has improved in many aspects throughout the semester. One general example of this improvement is the vocabulary, where simple vocabulary in the first essay had become more complex by the final essays. Additionally, I also believe that my writing has become more reflective of my actual voice and opinions, an improvement considering my first essays were best described as vague.

This is a reflective essay based on my experience whilst on my external placement in one of the local community hospital. I have chosen this incident specially as I used my communication skills and interpersonal skills when caring for a patient who is suffering from advanced dementia. I will be using Gibbs (1988) reflective model to structure my essay by allowing me to look at the incident from a number of perspectives. Reflection is concerned with consciously looking at, thinking about the experience, actions, feelings and responses and then interpreting or analysing them in order to learn from them (Atkins and Murphy, 1994). Reflection helps me to think about, plan and deliver high quality and safe care to my patients as a nursing associate (RCN website).

On reflection on the past semester I remember thinking at the beginning of the class that I would like to be a better communicator.

Reeves (2009) describes how to lead a change within and established faculty, “make the case compelling, and associate it with moral imperatives rather than compliance with external authority” (p. 93). During my five years of teaching in a middle school in San Juan, Puerto Rico, I worked with two different school leaders. The first one used an all-inclusive, safe environment approach to analyze the barriers that the school had to overcome to become the best academic learning center in the town. She started every school year with a welcome meeting in which all faculty and staff members would review, analyze, and adapt the mission of the school, per our students’ needs. The vision was created by her, after a meeting that she had with