Reflective Practice Example Nursing Essay

Reflecting on your own experiences is very important in nursing care as it helps improving on the way to work which leads to better improvement in nursing practice as well as care. “Reflection is the process of purposefully thinking back or recalling a situation to discover its purpose or meaning. Reflection is necessary for self-evaluation and improvement in the nursing practice” (Potter P. & Perry A., p. 148).

The journal article Reflective Practice: A Learning Tool for Student Nurses, by Peter Mark Wilding provides more information about why it is important to use reflective practice in clinical processes and has used Gibb’s cycle to make it easy to use the reflective process. “Reflection requires self-awareness and analysis (Schutz et al, 2004), thus it is a skill that needs to be acquired, developed and maintained.” (Wilding, p. 1, para. 4). 

I found reflective practice very important in my clinical practice as I could go reflect on what I could do better the next time I face the same situation. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate my reflective practice in clinical settings.

Description

This paper will contain very little information on my client and to maintain my client’s and lodge’s confidentiality I will be addressing my client as my resident. The first day at the lodge, I was warmly welcomed along with my other clinical members. The staff as well as the residents were pleased and happy to see us there. With textbook based knowledge only I sat inside a warm room waiting for the residents to be assigned.

The lodge setting was a home-like feeling with very friendly staff, the staff had a lot of information about every resident and the residents were really cooperative with the staff too. Soon everyone was assigned to their resident and I got to meet my resident and initiate a therapeutic relationship. Communicating with my resident was easy as she was happy, friendly and informative person who likes to enjoy reading book and is very spiritual.

She tries to relate most of the things to her spiritual beliefs and it is one of her strengths. I was in the lodge talking to my resident. I was using therapeutic communication and was successful in building a therapeutic relationship of trust, respect and professional intimacy. During the conversation as my client was telling me about her past memories, she came across one of her best memories she wanted to share with me to help me learn about her better.

The conversation started with a question I asked her “how did you meet your husband?” She told me she met her husband at a party and a few months later they decided to get married. As she was telling me the story in detail, she was so happy and excited. She told me how they would dance every evening with their kids and had supper together.

Throughout the story she maintained eye contact with me and was reliving cherished memories which were visible through her facial expressions. She continued the conversation by telling me how her day used to look like when her husband was away for work and her kids were not home.

“It was true and unconditional love we had for each other” she said wiping of the tears rolling down her cheek. She then mentioned her husband had passed away in a very young age but she still chose not to marry anyone else as he was the only man she would want to have in her life. As she continued through the conversation her facial expression changed and she looked unhappy while talking about her husband’s death.

I felt she was sad due to the loss of her husband even after 45 years. I placed my palm gently on her hand and let the emotional moment pass in a few seconds of silence. I think I could feel the complications she had to face as she described her life without her husband and how difficult it was for her to raise her kids without a father. I thought I was putting her through pain while I was asking her questions about her husband so I decided I will shift my interest of topic to a different phase of her life and not put her through sorrow anymore.

Throughout our conversation my resident and I were using non-verbal and verbal communication skills like speaking loud and clear but in moderate pitch, leaning forwards, making eye contact and nodding our heads, often showing interest in conversation.

Reflection

Using the Gibbs cycle from the journal article Reflective Practice: A Learning Tool for Student Nurses for reflection made it easy to organize my thoughts for this paper. The five stages of Gibb’s cycle of reflective process helped me think and make notes about reflective practice I did during the clinical at the lodge. During the conversation as my resident started talking about loss of her husband, I started building fear of losing trust and connection as I was not prepared to console her with words.

At first as I mentioned I thought she was sad and found it hard to overcome the loss of her husband. I tried to connect to what I would feel when someone talks to me about death. In the next meeting I was following up with her about the conversation that struck me and was in my head for a week. I prepared myself to console her and did a lot of reading about grief and proper response. 

As she was leading the conversation the chat went back to her husband’s death and when I started using what I learnt. She mentioned all the positive things she has got to learn due to her husband’s death like being independent, working and looking after her children, being close to her children, becoming emotionally strong and many more. I tried to relate her to what I might feel in that situation, but she was a different person and felt different.

Analysis

If I had used therapeutic communication skills of active listening responses like reflection or asked her more open ended questions that would help me get more information about how she was feeling. This would help me avoid the assumption that I made while she was talking about her husband.

She was sad about losing her husband but she had overcome it and found her own strengths which I did not get a chance to observe as I had not looked beyond her sadness. “Sometimes nursing students feel they “choose” an emotion from their perception of a client’s message” ((Arnold E. & Boggs K., p. 186).

The therapeutic communication skill of reflection could be tricky to use but in my case if I would have reflected on her feelings and asked her “it sounds like you still miss your husband a lot and did not overcome the whole incident” I would have got a different response. “Open-ended questions ask the client to think and reflect on their situation.

They help connect relevant elements of the client’s experience.” (Arnold E. & Boggs K., p. 182) While she was telling me about the whole incident, if I would have asked her more open-ended questions I would have got a brief idea about her feelings and situation. In conclusion, I learned my resident was not sad but she was proud telling others how she managed half of her life without her husband and raised her kids. She likes going down the memory lane to relive the memories she had with her husband. She does miss her husband but she has learnt a lot of things without him which made her strong and confident.

I have become more confident to use reflective processes to improve and learn different perspectives while looking into a particular topic. “Reflective practice and guided reflection are now a respected and required learning and assessment method in many nursing programs worldwide” (Wilding, p. 1, para. 4). With reflective practice I have gained knowledge that will help me throughout my nursing career to make better decisions and give better care.

References