Critical Reflection on Nursing Placement Experience

Running head: CRITICAL REFLECTION
CRITICAL REFLECTION
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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CRITICAL REFLECTION
Introduction:
During the time of my placement, I had gathered huge knowledge and skills while caring
for patients and working in the healthcare environment. A reflective assignment would be
developed which would follow Gibbs reflective cycle.
Description:
During the time of placements, I had gone through different experiences which had
helped me in enriching my nursing skills and knowledge. Once, I was allocated to take care of a
patient who had suffered from stroke and was presently in the rehabilitation unit under treatment
from multidisciplinary healthcare teams. It was a very busy ward and therefore I had huge work
burden of treating other patients as well with this stroke patient. I did not communicate with the
patient properly and only got time to apply my interventions and the different diagnostic tests
that needed to be conducted on daily basis. The patient used to interact with a slower approach
and therefore this often made me cut him in between stating him that I had understood what he
wanted to say. Moreover, I also did not get the time to educate him about different aspects of his
care and the lifestyle management he need to undertake. For this, after within 29 days of the
discharge, he was admitted to the ward once again with poor health conditions. Moreover, the
patient complained of poor service delivery from the team members. I noticed that none of the
team members communicated with each other. All engaged in power struggles and always
participated in blame games. None were found to be comfortable working with each other. As a
result of this, huge number of miscommunications, medication errors, omissions, improper
delegation had taken place during the care of the patient. Again one day, the patient called me
and asked me that he wants to have burgers and cheese rolls and ice creams. In such an instance,

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CRITICAL REFLECTION
I suffered from ethical dilemmas as I needed to respect the wishes of the patients but protecting
his wishes would mean harming his health and subjecting him to danger. This was against
beneficence and non-maleficence. With critical reasoning skills, I thought of making him
understand the negative impacts of his wish without making him feel humiliated or denied of his
rights. The patients understood the situation and withdrew his wishes. Therefore, the incidences
were mixture of both negative and positive aspects that are analyzed in details in the coming
paragraphs.
Feelings:
Initially I felt quite confident with the theoretical knowledge that I had developed in my
university semesters. However, after joining the placement sessions, I realized that the
knowledge I had gathered was not sufficient in ensuring quality care of the patients. The
environment of healthcare wards remains quite tensed and often busy with huge loads of work.
In such areas applying theoretical skills often does not become possible. I was quite upset when
the patient complained that I did not communicate with him and for that he was quite dissatisfied
with my care service. I also felt guilty as I completely overlooked the significance of the health
literacy and this affected the health of the patient making him readmit once again. Moreover, I
used to be quite stressed while working with the entire team as blame games and power struggles
affected my morale and working capability. However, my mentor was quite pleased about how i
handled the situation of ethical dilemmas and this made me quite happy.
Evaluation:
The bad part of the incidences was that the patient was highly dissatisfied with the care
services that he had received from me and also from the tea members. He also suffered a lot

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CRITICAL REFLECTION
because the healthcare members did not communicate among them successfully and hence there
were instances when more than one therapist visited the patient for providing service and there
were other instances when there was no need to attend him. Poor delegation among team
members resulted in medication errors as well that made the patient develop the feeling of
nausea and sleepy. Miscommunications lead to omissions and missed interventions that made his
health condition degrade. This affected the health condition of the patient and also impacted the
reputation of the healthcare organization. I could not develop effective therapeutic relationship
with him through effective communication. A proper rapport was not developed and therefore he
requested my seniors to change his nurse. This made me feel upset and embarrassed as I could
not meet his expectations. I also felt burdened with work while working in the healthcare team.
The health literacy of the patient was poor. I could not fulfill the duty of developing his
healthcare literacy and this also made him suffer immensely as he could not manage his self acre
successfully. The only good part was that I had applied my critical thinking power successfully
and was able to overcome the ethical dilemma successfully.
Effective communication skills are one of the most important foundations of developing
therapeutic relationships with patients. Such skills help in developing rapport with the patients by
which patients develop trust on the nursing professionals (Mazhindu et al., 2016). Studies opine
that such skills help patients in feeling secured and contented and thereby enable them to adhere
with the treatment (Scully, 2015). Effective teamwork also contributes to high quality care to
patients. Every member of the healthcare teams need to communicate with each other regarding
the care plans and the interventions they need to undertake (Stanley, 2016). They need to work
collaboratively with each other, engaging in effective feedback sessions with all the members,
inviting all their suggestion and working together to meet the same goals. Development of