Nursing Reflective Essay

Running Head: NURSING
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Nursing
Nursing Reflective Essay
(Student details :)
6/28/2019

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Nursing Reflective Essay
This reflective essay is based on reflecting upon the learning acquired on cultural
competence while recognizing my role being a Registered Nurse (RN). The reflective essay
will demonstrate a nursing practice of an RN providing care which is culturally safe and
justifiable. In general, reflection is an integral part of any learning procedure hence by
reflecting on this nursing incident I will evaluate the experience of learning in order to apply
into my future professional practice (Hickson, 2011). In this way, the essay will mainly
highlight cultural competence and cultural safety issues during nursing practice.
In this context, the reflective model given by Gibbs is going to utilize here for
successfully reflecting on this clinical incident. The key stages of the reflection will be as
follows:
Source: (Gibbs, 2016)
 Description
 Feelings
 Evaluation
 Analysis
 Conclusion

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 Action Plan (Gibbs, 2016).
Description
The reflective essay is all about developing a deeper understanding along with the
appreciation of cultural diversity within Australia while producing a culturally safe environ. I
will include cultural awareness while demonstrating cultural safety at a large extent (Brady,
2016). The case on which I am reflecting is about a 93 years old patient named Mrs X. My
patient was diagnosed with diabetes mellitus and confusion. She recently moved to our
nursing home. Earlier Mrs X was living with her family and later then she moved to our
nursing home. Mrs X’s family could not look after her at home hence she faced a fall at
home. Now, Mrs X is a resident of our nursing home and she is from a non-English speaking
background. Mrs X is from Sri Lanka hence she speaks and understands Sinhala. The family
of Mrs X visits her once in a week.
Feelings
I started attending my patient Mrs X since she has arrived at the nursing home where I
work recently. As she is 93 years old and suffering from diabetic mellitus hence I feel
empathy for her whenever she gets agitated and irritated in her daily life. When I came to
know that she had a fall at home then I felt bad as I could result in any worst situation in
relation to her health and well-being. Sometimes, when I see her happy and living her life
properly then I get motivated and filled with enthusiasm for life. In addition to that, language
barriers made me feel the importance of communication styles and different languages. I also
feel helpless sometimes whenever Mrs X faces difficulty in expressing her requirements and
wishes (Sorensen, 2017).
Evaluation
Although the whole experience of attending my patient Mrs X was a good from the
perspective of learning related to nursing practice yet my experience has some bad or
challenging aspects too (Lee & Gu, 2013). In this way, post evaluating the whole experience
of attending an old diabetic patient I found that language barriers raised as an important
obstacle while communicating with Mrs X as she belongs to Sri Lanka. Thus, cultural
competence has contributed into posing the cross-cultural challenges while dealing with the
patients at nursing homes. Based on (Bassos, 2016), it used to be so difficult when Mrs X got
agitated and confused many times. Handling the situations, when Mrs X faces trouble