Reflective Essay on Care of Older Person with Dementia Impairment

Running Head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Care of Older Person Reflective Essay
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REFLECTIVE ESSAY 2
Introduction
Gibbs reflection is a tool which is used in the nursing field to reflect on events and
occurrences which happens between a patient and a healthcare professional. The events can have
negative or positive impacts on the practice of a healthcare professional. A nurse or a student can
reflect on many occasions which occurred maybe while in school, personal experiences and what
they encountered as they were taking care of a patient with a specific kind of disorder (Noble &
Heale, 2017). In this paper, I am going to reflect on my personal experience which took place on
my clinical placement as I was taking care of an old person with dementia impairment using
Gibbs (1988) reflective cycle. I had to go through the six stages of this model to improve my
nursing practice and be able to handle patients suffering from different kinds of infections and
diseases.
Description of the situation
The second clinical placement of my first semester of my bachelor of nursing was at a
nursing care home where I was supposed to attend an old person with dementia impairment
(Kiosses et al., 2015). I first had to start talking to this person so that he began sharing his
personal experiences with me. While speaking, I found out that he was not able to remember
everything that had happened to his past. I was also able to observe that he looked so confused
and that he kept on repeating his words and his eyes had a glazed appearance. This old person
did not have the capability of standing for long hours. As I kept on asking him a couple of
questions, I realized that he was a bit upset as he thought I was asking too much about his
personal life (Falck et al., 2017). I was able to understand that he had previously been attended
by several healthcare workers and caregivers in the care home, but due to the longtime impacts
of this disorder, he was not able to recover easily and entirely at once. Due to the past poor

REFLECTIVE ESSAY 3
relationship this person had with professional health workers his condition did not seem to
improve because he was always afraid of sharing some significant information about his health
to them (Morley et al., 2015). Due to his condition, I was also able to note that his friends could
despise him and he was lonely which made the situation worse.
Feelings and thoughts
At first, I thought this person was pretending and not wanted to share much information
about his past experiences with me because maybe he did not trust me. I had to assure him that I
was not a bad person and I was only interested in helping him. I felt so sad when I realized he
was sincere it is just his health condition and the disorder which made him behave so. I thought
of being so much friendly to him so that I can gain his trust. I offered to feed him and talk softly
to him so that he cannot get irritated by my questions. I could not believe how the previous
nurses and healthcare professional who attended him did not succeed in improving his health
condition (Prince et al., 2015). They were also not able to form a strong therapeutic relationship
with him which could have helped them a lot in gathering information about this person past
experiences and medical records so that they can be in a position to make right medical and
treatment decisions regarding his health (Van der Steen et al., 2014). I was surprised to see how
his fellow friends could despise him because of his health condition and yet no action was taken
against them to warn then about the same.