Nursing Critical Reflection

Running head: NURSING CRITICAL REFLECTION
NURSING CRITICAL REFLECTION
Name of the Student:
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1NURSING CRITICAL REFLECTION
Description
I was assigned to a simulated patient who presented with complaints of pain in the
abdomen. As expected, I was required to perform an Abdominal Assessment of the patient, in
front of my assessor, who would then grade me based on my performance. I was quite confident
in my performance initially and confidently performed all the necessary steps of Inspection,
Auscultation, Palpation and Percussion in the correct order (Reuben, 2016).). However, when it
came to being asked questions by my assessor, I became very nervous and fumbled. As a result, I
was unable to appropriately answer any of the questions related to bowel sounds and the
importance of performing an abdominal assessment.
Feelings
Due to my nervousness, the grades given by my assessor were not as commendable as I
had expected. Thus, after the incident of nervousness, upon reflecting on the situation afterwards,
I felt quite disheartened and discouraged. However, I reflected upon this incident further and
realized that I must consider improving my performance and evaluating the reason behind why
my assessor graded me accordingly. Indeed, as per Standard 1.2 of the Standards of Practice
formulated by the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia (NMBA, 2016), it is important for
nurses to engage in critical reflection by nurses since it allows for the implementation of
decisions and interventions which are evidence-based, safe and of high quality. According to
Schmidt and Brown (2016), such a reflective practice instill beneficial implications by allowing
nurses like me to identify skills, faults and strengths which further paves the way for personal
and professional improved and resultant enhanced management of critical patient care situations.

2NURSING CRITICAL REFLECTION
Evaluation
The major reasons which negatively impacted my performance are my feelings of
anxiety, nervousness and stress. In order to resolve my doubts and better understand where my
performance may have went wrong, I decide to actively communicate with my assessor. My
assessor empathetically listened to me concerns and proceeded to explain me the importance of
bowel sounds in an abdominal assessment. My assessor communicated to me that a nurse must
critically reason assessment results in order to arrive at an appropriate diagnosis. Indeed, as
researched by Breum, Rud, Kirkegaard and Nordentoft (2015), abdominal sounds which are
hypoactive, may be indicative of an obstruction in the gastrointestinal tract while hyperactive
sounds may indicate the presence of any gastrointestinal or digestive disorder which may be
enhancing peristalsis. Such sounds must be critically evaluated by a nurse since it paves the way
for diagnosing a patient with diarrhea, intestinal obstruction or gastroenteritis and hence,
implementation of required nursing interventions (McGarry & MacCallum, 2019).
Analysis
Thus, after extensively reflecting and analyzing this incident, I realized the importance of
additional principles of ‘communication’, in addition to merely clinical practice in nursing.
Strategies of interpersonal communication and empathy not only allow nurses to better
understand patient needs but also allows for optimum nurse-to-nurse communication and
collaborative work (Cho & Jeong, 2018). Indeed, it was only after communicating my thoughts
to the assessor, was I able to pinpoint the skills which I need to improve upon. Additional key
principles which I learned were nursing practices of evidence-based, critical thinking, which is
identified in NMBA Standard of Practice 1.1 (NMBA, 2016). A lack of critical thinking and