Critical Reflection: Healthcare Professional Communication

Running Head: CRITICAL REFLECTION: HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL
COMMUNICATION 1
Critical Reflection: Healthcare Professional Communication
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CRITICAL REFLECTION: HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 2
Critical Reflection of Healthcare Professional Communication
Description
In my current role as an Endorsed Enrolled Nurse, I have been working in the Psychiatric
Intensive Care Unit (PICU) of the Mental Health Inpatient Unit. Having been in the unit for quite
some time and based on the nursing experience I have gathered over time, the Director of
Nursing (DON) encouraged me to take the lead role in developing and implementing new
strategies to manage the unit. This was directly relating to the policies and procedures for the
treatment of patients that were housed there for short periods, during the early acute phase of
their illness. In spite of my relatively junior educational position within the treatment team, I was
asked to undertake this role as I had extensive knowledge and experience spanning more than 12
years in the provision of direct mental health care and a further 12 years in a forensic setting.
As part of this process, I conducted a comprehensive review of the local area policies
over about a two month period as well as workplace perceptions as showcased by Quinlan,
Johnstone, and McNamara, (2009) and Quinlan and Johnstone, (2009). The review focused
specifically on prescribed patient rights, patient searching indications and guidelines, as well as
environmental safety and searching procedures of both patients and healthcare practitioners. This
was also to enable me to get acquainted with the general Australian healthcare workplace health
and safety policies, regulations and procedures . The Australian work health and safety strategy
2012-2022 for instance outlines these guidelines more so regarding the upholding of healthy,
safe and productive working lives of the Australian health care workforce Safe (Australia, S. W.
2012).
Following this comprehensive review, and after counterchecking with the relevant
Mental Health Act, I proposed a number of sweeping changes to policy and procedure within the

CRITICAL REFLECTION: HEALTHCARE PROFESSIONAL COMMUNICATION 3
PICU. These were subsequently addressed and ratified by the DON and implemented within a
short space of time. However, even after putting all these efforts, I observed a number of senior
registered nurses blatantly ignored the changes and instead continued to perform their duties
through the scraped procedures.
Feelings
I was alarmed by this turn of events and the resistance by the interdisciplinary team to
adopt the new changes left me in grey shock. I did not expect such sort of resistance especially
from workmates we had had great cordial working relations for a very long time. The changes I
had come up with had been lauded by leading psychiatrists as a significant improvement in
psychiatric nursing practice for both patients and staff with regard to terms of conditions and
safety. I had anticipated that experienced staff would see the benefits of the changes and be eager
to give them the greatest opportunity to succeed. When I reflected on my educational position
amongst these staff, I felt powerless to enforce the changes. I deemed that all the work I had
done in policy and procedure construction had gone into the drains. This feeling was
compounded by the fact that, I felt it awkward to confront them on the same and obviously did
not want to destroy my workplace relationships.
Disturbed that the tedious work I had done might go to the drain, I sort the Clinical Nurse
Consultant (CNC) intervention and narrated to him my disappointment. Luckily, he informed me
that he had also noticed the resistance to changes adoption and agreed that we need to discuss
with the DON to find a lasting solution. Later in the week, the DON attended the area and the
CNC and I apprised him of the shortcomings of some of the team members and our concerns for
the possible long-term ramification for staff and patient safety. The DON was observably