Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Running head: GIBBS REFLECTIVE CYCLE
GIBBS REFLECTIVE CYCLE
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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GIBBS REFLECTIVE CYCLE
Introduction:
Reflective practice helps professionals to develop their skills and knowledge in patient
care delivery by helping them to identify their strengths and weakness (Kaya et al. 2017). This
assignment is reflective in nature which would analyze one incident from my nursing placement
months and help in developing a deeper insight into it. Gibbs reflective model would be used for
this purpose.
Description:
During the time of my placement, I got the opportunity of working in a community based
nursing home under the guidance of a skilled and expert mentor. During those days, I got the
opportunity to develop hands on knowledge while caring for patients and also developed ideas
about the day to day responsibilities that I need to attend to in community healthcare centers.
During such days, I was assigned the duty of attending Ted on one shift. Ted was a 80 year old
man who was suffering from mild dementia and pressure ulcer on his sacrum. A catheter was
also fitted and he was at a high risk of fall. He was admitted to the nursing home because there
was no one to care for him at his home and the priority of the care was to help him recover from
the pressure ulcers. I visited the patient with my mentor several times and redressed his wounds
and changed his catheter as well. However, one afternoon when I along with my mentor returned
to the office after completing the last visit of the day, we received a call from Ted’s nursing
home regarding the supply of the catheter night bags. Hearing this, another nurse namely Anne
immediately reacted stating that the nursing home members are unnecessarily creating issues
regarding the matter. She got angry and upset and started shouting sting that she had already told
them that she would return to the nursing home with the night bags in time only. However, the

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situation was successfully handled by my mentor where he stated that he himself would return to
the nursing home with the necessities. However, Anne kept on talking about the topic in a non-
stop manner continuously complaining how she had been busy throughout her stressful day and
she was given too many patients for managing their double leg wounds as well as washing and
re-dressing. Few minutes later, my mentor asked me prepare the goody bag of Catheter night
bags and following this, we visited the nursing home. My mentor knocked on the room of Ted
and after gaining consent, we entered. The nursing home members stated that the patient had got
agitated and restless after Anne did not come back to him after one hour as promised to Ted with
the catheter bag. This made him fall and bruise his wounds. It was really tensed situation but my
mentor handled the situation successfully. I saw my mentor to talk with a patient in a soft tone
along with maintain a flexible posture sitting next to ted on same levels. We apologized and
empathized with the patient reassuring him that this would never happen in future. To this, the
patient got calm and felt pleased and satisfied.
Feelings:
Initially the entire situation made me feel upset and disappointed as Anne was shouting at
the top of her voice in the nursing rest center as this was highly unprofessional. Moreover, I also
felt angry when she was not ready to accept her mistake even though she realized that she had
forgotten about the promise she had made to the patient. However, I controlled my emotions and
tried to calm down the situation. Moreover, I felt bad for the patient as his expectation was not
met and had become restless. This had made him fall which added to his suffering. I was also
quite surprised to find out how my mentor handled the entire situation with his expertise. With
his effective communication skills and friendly attributes, he made the patient calm and

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ultimately became successful in developing a relationship with the patient. His values, skills and
attributes made me feel impressed and awestruck.
Evaluation
The bad part of the incident was that the patient was not provided quality service and
care. It is extremely important for every nursing professional to fulfill their duties in a timely
manner and with greater quality so as to ensure that every patients receives the best quality
service. Here, Anne had forgotten to provide the catheter night bags to the patient on time and
thereby had breached her responsibility. Such omissions and poor quality actions might have
negative impacts on health of patients (Grace 2017). Similarly, Ted was seen to suffer from
anxiety as well as restlessness when he did not get the service as promised to him by the previous
nurse Anne. This made him agitated and he had fall incident that added to his suffering. Another
bad part of the incident was that Anne had shown an unprofessional behavior not only with the
patient but also with the fellow colleagues and senior. Anne had promised the patient that she
would return within an hour with the bags but she did not do so. This was unprofessional as she
could not keep the promise she made to the service users. Moreover, she was found to be
shouting at the top of her voices complaining about different aspects like busy days, high work
burden and even complaining about Ted and nursing home. She was not able to control her
emotions and exhibited an unprofessional behavior in her workplace. She entirely lacked self-
regulation and was found to be hyper. The only good part of the incident was that my mentor
and I handled the entire situation successfully by applying effective communication skills and
different nursing values and this helped in managing the patient successfully.