Excitement and Concerns with My Clinical Experience

Excitement and Concerns with My Clinical Experience

      This clinical practicum is one that I have been looking forward to and I am grateful for this opportunity to be able to work with the pediatric population.. The pediatric population is the most vulnerable, and it is important to gain the trust and create a rapport with these patients and families. Although my pediatric experience is limited, I believe through this experience I will be able to gain the skills needed to provide adequate care for this population of patients.. What concerns me the most about this population is knowing how to properly diagnosis these patients and provide the best possible care. It is important to provide a thorough assessment, make sure they are reaching their milestones for their age as well as recognizing abuse cases. If any of these areas are missed, it can have a lifelong negative impact on their lives.

Strengths and Weaknesses
I consider my biggest strength when caring for the pediatric population is patience and compassion. I have come from a large family and love interacting with children. I m also a mother to four children under the age of 8. I have a knack with kids and seem to be the mom that  kids always come to hug and talk with.

A weakness of mine is keeping my emotions in tack when dealing with child neglect and abuse cases as well as terminal illnesses. I feel I am a nonjudgmental person, but these situations are difficult for me to handle. However, I know the importance of being unbiased and maintaining my professionalism. As I mentioned previously, children are the most vulnerable and helpless in some situations, and as a provider, we are a tool to make sure these children are safe and cared for properly.

Family, Family Roles and Culture

My definition of family is a group of people that are related to each other, usually live together and often consists of parents and children. There is also extended family, which consists of aunts, uncles, and grandparents. I feel the parents carry the responsibility of making sure their kids are healthy and up to date on their healthcare. It is important that we gain the trust of the family and family members, so they are at ease and feel comfortable when an advanced practice nurse is utilized. Culture also plays an important part in a family’s medical care.  There are many different beliefs when it comes to utilizing healthcare resources. It is important that we respect these  beliefs, especially if they differ from our own.

Nursing Theory

The nursing theory that I will focus on when providing care for pediatric patients is the comfort theory. The comfort theory is a nursing theory that was first developed in the 1990s by Katharine Kolcaba. The technical definition for comfort for health care is the immediate state of being strengthened by having the needs for relief, ease, and transcendence addressed in the                                                                             four contexts of holistic human experience: physical, psychospiritual, sociocultural, and environmental (Samonte & Vallente, 2016).  This theory is focused on assessing the patient’s comfort needs, developing and the implementing proper nursing care plans, and evaluating the patient’s comfort after the care plans have been carried out. It is important to continue to assess the patient’s comfort needs, to design comfort measures to address those needs and to continually reassess the patient’s comfort levels after implementation.

Goals and Objective

By the end of this clinical rotation, I am hoping that I conquer all of my goals and objections and will continually strive to improve myself. I feel one of the largest goals is effective communication. I am focused on maintaining effective verbal and non-verbal communication for the children and their families. Another important aspect of providing care for the pediatric population is the ability to properly obtain their medical history, including their family medical history in an age-appropriate, sensitive manner from the child and their caretaker.

The ability to properly conduct a physical exam that is appropriate for the nature of the visit and the patients age and to provide proper treatment is very important. It is especially important to be able to identify signs and symptoms for the nature of the visit as well as ones that are not. To demonstrate the ability of age-appropriate differential diagnosis  and to make sure the patients immunization status is up to date. It is also important to educate the patients and caregivers on all aspects of the care that is provided.

Timeline for Practicum Activities

For the first week of practicums, my focus is centered around getting orientated to the medical office as well as meeting the staff, getting to know my preceptor and what she expects of

me, and learning the computer system and charting. During this time, I will also see patients with my preceptor. For weeks 2 and 3, I will continue to see patients with my preceptor and take the initiative to see the less complicated patients on my own. I will review the care that I provided and look for feedback from my preceptor and focus on any areas of improvement that is needed. During the next few weeks, which is week 4,5, and 6, I will perform my assessments independently and identify developmental milestones without having to review my resources.

During weeks 7 and 8, my goal is centered around treatment plans. After the assessment, I plan to come up with the patient’s treatment plans independently and review this information with my preceptor’s treatment plans and see what improvements I can make. For the final few weeks, which are weeks 9, 10, and 11, I plan on generating age-appropriate differential diagnosis after assessing the pediatric patient. I will also continue to work on my examination techniques, communications skills and explore the feedback provided by my preceptor and see where improvements can be made.