Nursing Placements: A Student's Experience with Diabetes Care

Running Head: NURSING 1
Nursing
Names
Institution

NURSING 2
Introduction
Nursing placements, students who pursue nursing courses experience many things that
they have never experienced before, and this prepares them to learn more and perfect their
profession. According to Natasha (2013), some of these things may be positive while others
negative, and therefore requires nurses to use both clinical and non-clinical skills in order to be
able to overcome those that may prevent them from attaining their goals. Because nurses have
the role of taking care of patients to the best of their abilities to ensure that they get good
services, it is always good to overcome all barriers which affect caregiving and focus on
delivering positive results (Sophie, 2017).
Description
During my placement, I came across various situations which helped me to advance my
knowledge in this field. For example, in one incidence, there was a patient who was brought to
the health center in a critical condition. After being diagnosed, it was found that he had diabetes.
Because the hospital had a shortage of nurses, I was given the task of taking care of this patient
through ensuring that he takes right dosage, feels motivated, and also making his family
members to feel at ease. According to Daniela (2013), being a nurse requires one to use various
skills to ensure that people have hopes in recovery even if the situations appear very serious. In
this case, I was supposed to employ various skills such as communication, interpersonal, and
problem-solving skills.
After the admission of this patient, none of the family members came to check on him
and this appeared to affect him in various ways. For this reason, the hospital management had to

NURSING 3
plead with his relatives to show love and give the patients hopes that mediation would work for
him.
Feeling
Being my first time to be involved in caring for a patient with a chronic illness, this was
not an easy task because there were so many things that I was not familiar with. Initially, I had
fear for the unknown because there were so many things that were crossing my mind. For
example, I kept wondering what if I do what is not supposed to be done. However, after
sometimes, I gained confidence because the various classes that I had undergone at the university
had given me good knowledge concerning how to similar tasks.
Although I felt what I was doing was right, like for example ensuring the patient takes the
right dosage as prescribed by the doctor, I had a hard time because I felt for the patient
considering that he was very ill. I also kept feeling that his family did not deserve the pain it was
undergoing through thinking that the life of their own was in danger. Although these kinds of
feelings were affecting me in various ways, they also made me to do things beyond expectations
because my goal, in this case, was to save the life of this patient.
During this time, I realized various things that made me to come up with various
opinions. For example, I noticed that lack of family closeness when one is sick may worsen the
condition. This factor made me to trust Ann (2013) that the closeness of family members and
friends when one is sick plays a crucial role in making patients to feel that there is hope and this
prevents them from developing other conditions. My opinion, in this case, is that people should
visit their sick family members and friends from time to time in order to show them that they are,
and also to give them hopes for recovery.