A Reflective Account Essay Example This has enabled me to explore the meaning and significance of my clinical practice and to recognise the complexities within it. The experience raises a number of issues frequently encountered in daily nursing practice. However, for the purpose of this article, two issues will be discussed in blogger.comted Reading Time: 13 mins 7/7/ · A reflective essay is a type of written work which reflects your own self. Since it’s about yourself, you already have a topic to write about. For reflective essay examples, readers expect you to evaluate a specific part of your life. To do this, you may reflect on emotions, memories, and feelings you’ve experienced at that blogger.comted Reading Time: 7 mins 30/4/ · reflective account Essay Activity 3 Consider your workplace as a learning environment and reflect upon three areas for improvement. The term reflection refers to reviewing experience from practice so that it may be described, analysed, evaluated and consequently used to inform and change future practice.”
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Reflective practice has been a familiar topic in nursing journals and the term is regularly used in professional nursing practice. This article describes a reflective experience related to caring for a patient with chronic obstructive pulmonary disease in the community.
The professional implications of this experience are explored through reflection. This exploration raised two main issues: the development of a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship and the feelings of guilt experienced when reflecting on whether I had let the patient down when most needed, reflective account essay, in the final stages reflective account essay her life.
obstructive pulmonary disease COPD in the community, reflective account essay. This has enabled me to explore the meaning and significance of my clinical practice and to recognise the complexities within it. The experience raises a number of issues frequently encountered in daily nursing practice. However, for the purpose of this article, two issues will be discussed in depth.
These relate reflective account essay the development of a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship and dealing with feelings of guilt. The reflective process allows practitioners to question and analyse their experiences and actions as a means of developing their knowledge, reflective account essay, skills and behaviour, to enhance clinical practice. Author Margaret Barnett is COPD nurse specialist, Derriford Hospital, Plymouth.
Email: margaret. uk Description of the experience My work as a specialist nurse involves caring for and managing patients in the community with COPD. I had been caring for Mary not her real name for two years.
She was in her early 50s but had severe COPD. Initially, Mary was fairly stable and during exacerbations of COPD she could be managed at home effectively. She had a caring and supportive family reflective account essay husband. Last year we had discussed her being referred to Harefield Hospital in London for consideration for a lung transplant, but after her first visit for assessment she withdrew and said she could not go through with the investigations.
Over the last six months her condition showed signs of deterioration with frequent chest infections that required management in hospital. Because of her deterioration she had been receiving weekly visits from the COPD home care service.
I visited Mary at home a week after she had been discharged from hospital, reflective account essay, as she had an exacerbation of her COPD.
On my visit she was in good form and cheerful. She looked well, in fact the best I had seen her reflective account essay some time. may 18 :: vol 19 no 36 :: 41 Keywords Reflective practice; Respiratory system and disorders These keywords are based on the subject headings from the British Nursing Index, reflective account essay. This article has been subject to double-blind review. For related articles and author guidelines visit the online archive at www. uk and search using the keywords.
THE ESSENTIAL purpose of reflective practice is to enable the practitioner to interpret an experience in order to learn from it Johns It is a process that involves examining individual personal thoughts and actions in daily practice Somerville and Keeling This reflective account relates to knowing-in-action everyday practicewhich Schon reflective account essay as reflection-on-action.
We discussed how to manage these by keeping her oxygen in place and using her salbutamol inhaler Bellamy and Bookerto try pacing herself and to develop a coping strategy that would help her to manage her panic attacks. She said she would try this. When I completed my clinical assessment and documented her spirometry, which was unchanged, I felt satisfied that her condition was stable.
I explained to her that I was going on reflective account essay the next day but that I would visit her on my first day back at work the following week. If she had any problems, she had the office telephone number to contact other members of the respiratory team. This I did and arranged to visit him that afternoon at home. He informed me that she had been unwell for a couple of days. Hospital admission was offered but Mary declined and stated that she would wait for the GP to visit the next day.
In the early hours of Friday morning Mary informed her husband that she felt unwell and requested an ambulance. As he was making the call he described Mary as having some form of fit and she appeared to stop breathing. Her husband had some first aid experience and was able to revive her. The ambulance crew arrived soon afterwards, but she arrested as they were transporting her from the house to the reflective account essay. The framework allows practitioners new to reflection to examine personal thoughts and actions with a structure that is easy to apply and understand.
The questions outlined in the model helped me to analyse my clinical reflective account essay and provided a framework for reflection Box 1.
This related to the development of a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship and the feelings of guilt I experienced in that I may have let the patient down when most needed, in the final stages of her life. Questions in the model asked why I responded in the way I did and the consequences of this for myself and others involved, how I felt about the situation and whether I could have responded to the situation reflective account essay a different way.
Development of a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship Knowing and understanding the patient as an individual is pivotal to establishing a therapeutic nurse-patient relationship and sets a particular patient apart from other patients with the same medical diagnosis Radwin Mitchell emphasises that patients who feel understood and accepted also feel cared for.
As I visited Mary weekly at home, I witnessed the effects that living with COPD had on her — how minimal exertion caused her severe breathlessness, which affected her daily life and her role in the family. According to Benner and Wrubelreflective account essay, theory relates not only to theoretical and formal knowledge, but also to experiential knowledge of the real-world experience. To develop a professional nurse-patient relationship To empower Mary to manage her panic attacks To enable Mary to die at home Why did I respond as I did?
I felt guilty that I may have let Mary down. If I had been on duty would the result have been the same? Following her death they were devastated but felt that she was now at peace, which comforted them How do I know how the patient felt? Mary told me that she looked forward to my visits.
She felt I really understood how she felt and what she was experiencing How did I feel about the situation? Very guilty that I had not been around at the time of death, when I was most needed When Mary died I experienced sadness and grief at the loss of someone with whom I had shared reflective account essay great deal regarding her illness I felt disappointed that I had not been able to experience the closure of her care What factors influenced my decisions and actions?
A strategy had been discussed on my last visit of how Mary should manage her panic attacks What sources of knowledge influenced my decision-making? Although Mary had reported an increase in her panic attacks, her condition was unchanged clinically Mary and her family were fully aware of how to contact my colleagues in my absence What other choices did I have?
I could have requested my colleagues to either telephone or visit the patient What were the consequences of this choice? I do not feel that these choices would have altered the course of events How do I now feel about this experience? I have mixed emotions, reflective account essay, as Mary did not die peacefully at home as she had wished. However, had I created a vision of a perfect death and the end result had not been as I had visualised? What have I learnt from this experience? As an example of using reflective account essay clinical skills and knowledge, reflective account essay, I had recognised that Mary was developing early signs of cor pulmonale right sided heart failure reflective account essay by primary lung diseasereflective account essay, which is one of the complications of severe COPD.
I had recognised this by clinically assessing the patient, recording her oxygen saturations and monitoring her symptoms: reflective account essay oxygen saturations below 90 per cent ; increasing shortness of breath; and peripheral ankle oedema.
Consequently, longterm oxygen therapy was implemented following discussion with her consultant and blood reflective account essay analysis. She was grateful for this and felt it helped her to manage her symptoms and improve her daily activities of living Roper et al Webb acknowledges that listening and showing empathy is of great importance to patients because, for some patients, psychosocial needs were seen as more important than the physical aspects of their care, where action could be taken to deal with worries or concerns.
Luker perceives the reflective account essay relationship as the means by which therapeutic nursing care can be delivered. Mary trusted my judgement and abilities as a 44 may 18 :: vol 19 no 36 :: nurse and often told me how much better she felt once I had seen her. My visits gave her confidence and reassurance. At times her needs were extensive and she would call me in times of crisis when unwell.
I had previously been available when needed and was dependable, reflective account essay, therefore providing a sense of security to Mary, reflective account essay.
I was happy to do whatever I could to promote care and comfort, and to ease her suffering. Ramos describes levels of liking and bonding with patients. Mary and I had established a bond and professional friendship, reflective account essay, which was easy and comfortable. Ramos found that, reflective account essay, at Level 3, reflective account essay would give care above and beyond the call of duty.
Her care involved more than delivering treatments and performing tasks; it involved demonstrating an understanding of her experiences, her personal beliefs and what was important to her. Even though I felt my relationship with Mary was purely professional, my feeling of sadness reflective account essay account for reflective account essay I felt so guilty when I heard that Mary had died. This led me to question whether I had become overinvolved with Mary without being aware of this.
However, I do not feel that I jeopardised the team network or allowed my relationship with Mary to affect my judgement. Reflective account essay might have been because, reflective account essay, without realising it, I had been overprotective and felt that I was the only professional that could deliver her wish to have a peaceful and dignified death at home.
Karlsen and Addington-Hall acknowledge that many patients would prefer to die at home rather than in a hospital setting. This had been discussed several months previously, following her decision not to go ahead with the assessments for a heart and lung transplant. Mary was aware of the severity of her condition and had said that, if she only had six months to live then, so be it. I often refer to the stages of dying — denial and isolation, anger, bargaining, depression and acceptance — that Kubler-Ross identified, when patients are entering the terminal phase of illness.
Although patients may not experience these feelings in this order, reflective account essay, they enable practitioners to help patients to cope with dying and death. In contrast, Benner and Wrubel suggest that the way these psychological stages have been used has led to the concept of a perfect death. Benner and Wrubel state that nurses reflective account essay develop and use appropriate skills such as empathy and understanding with a caring attitude help people to open up and address the needs of individual patients.
However, as I discovered, developing a close and open relationship with patients increases the risk of experiencing personal and emotional pain. Although this study relates to the experiences of novice nursing students, it can also be related to nurses with more experience. I can relate to the feelings of guilt, shock and letting the patient down that many of the students experienced, but perhaps on a different level. As qualified practitioners, we develop skill, knowledge and expertise over time to enable us to relate theory to practice and deliver expert care.
We learn through our experiences and by coping with a variety of situations. The most common explanations were that student nurses really liked the patients Loftus They had developed good relationships with the patients, finding them easy to talk to, especially as there was openness concerning their condition and prognosis.
Maybe this is also why we sometimes feel different levels of sadness when patients die. Inter-subjectivity relates to the notion of embodiment; in other words, where the nurse is reflective account essay immersed in the experience of the patient Maeve
Reflective Essay (Examples, Introduction, Topics) - EssayPro
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9/9/ · Celta Reflective Account - Teaching Practice Pages: 4 ( words) A reflective account on approach to leadership Pages: 4 ( words) Reflective account on End-Of-Life Pages: 4 ( words) "Teenagers need to take into account important issues in order for a relationship to flourish." Pages: 3 ( words) M3 Interpret the contents of a trading 30/4/ · reflective account Essay Activity 3 Consider your workplace as a learning environment and reflect upon three areas for improvement. The term reflection refers to reviewing experience from practice so that it may be described, analysed, evaluated and consequently used to inform and change future practice.” 20/1/ · In a reflective essay, a writer primarily examines his or her life experiences, hence the term ‘reflective’. The purpose of writing a reflective essay is to provide a platform for the author to not only recount a particular life experience, but to also explore how he or she has changed or learned from those blogger.comted Reading Time: 9 mins
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