REFLECTIVE NURSING

REFLECTIVE NURSING

This course has helped me immensely in shaping my nursing practice skills, knowledge and attitude towards nursing care. By broadening the view of nursing and health from bedside to global, there has been need to improve the quality of care and implementing evidence-based practices to improve patient outcomes (Nettina, & Nettina, 2016). For instance, the emphasis being put on documentation of patient care and its importance did not initially have a significant impact on my practice. Nurses are good at the documentation, but do we review doctor’s updates before beginning patient care? In the hemodialysis unit, a doctor documented that no heparin was to be used in Mr. Y due to the presence of hematoma in the head. It was only when the patient went into a hypotensive state that the doctor pointed out what she had written. So there is no essence in documenting if we don’t review patient notes before beginning procedures.

What impacted my practice is the nurse-sensitive indicators. When nursing care is evaluated using the stipulated quality indicators, it is evident that nurses do not take their work seriously. There has been a rise in mortality cases due to pressure sores, which indicates a failure in the part of nurses. Turning a patient, monitoring input and output and regular change of linen are simple nursing procedures, but we tend to ignore them. We should understand that whatever we do as a significant impact on the patient, their family and the community view of nursing.

To change the nurses’ attitude, it is essential to evaluate the mode of training and instill nursing expectations for all trainees ( Weiner et al. 2016). Nurses should also be allowed to practice according to their training, skills, and knowledge so that they can fully implement what they learnt and fulfill their goals and expectations of nursing. Besides, hospitals should properly guide the students and show them a clear view of their scope of practice to avoid regrets and promote quality levels of care in our current and future health care systems.

References

Nettina, S. M., & Nettina, S. M. (2016). Lippincott manual of nursing practice. Lippincott Williams & Wilkins.

Weiner, B. J., Alexander, J. A., Shortell, S. M., Baker, L. C., Becker, M., & Geppert, J. J. (2016). Quality improvement implementation and hospital performance on quality indicators. Health services research, 41(2), 307-334.