Nursing Reflective Essay

Running head: NURSING REFLECTIVE ESSAY 1
Nursing Reflective Essay
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NURSING REFLECTIVE ESSAY 2
NURSING REFLECTIVE ESSAY
In this paper, I will be reflecting on the video about a GP who is seeing a patient (Alison,
38-yeard-old woman with a low mood) with a depressive disorder. The reflection covers how the
patient describes her low mood, reduced energy, decreased motivation, loss of appetite, early
morning awakening, weight loss, reduced enjoyment, poor concentration, and decreased self-care
interest. It also reflects on how the GP explores the symptoms’ effects on other people in the life
of the patient, exploring the low mood past history, assessing the risk of suicide and how the GP
explains about depression to the patient. The paper, therefore, reflects on lessons I learned while
watching the video of a patient needing completion of a Mental State Examination (MSE).
In order to outline what I have learned in this video, I will be relating the theoretical
knowledge I have learned about MSE to the practical application as presented in the video. My
expectation is that the video should display the actual MSE as a structured means of observing
and describing a patient’s present state of mind, under such domains as appearance, behavior,
mood, and affect, speech, thought process, thought content, perception, cognition and insights. I
will analyze this video based on whether the GP asked questions that comprehensively captured
all the domains of MSE. I will also reflect on whether the main purpose of MSE which is to
obtain a detailed cross-sectional description of the mental state of the patient that when combined
with historical and biographical information of her psychiatric history, would permit the GP to
make accurate diagnosis alongside formulation (Arnfred et al., 2018).
The first lesson I learned is the value of welcoming a patient and introducing GP to the
patient before starting the MSE. The GP welcomed her patient and even gave her the seat. I have
come to appreciate that the GP not only welcomed the patient, but also introduced herself to the
patient. The GP also inquired from the patient how she would like her to call her. I believe this is

NURSING REFLECTIVE ESSAY 3
why the GP managed to build a rapport with the patient through a therapeutic relationship. This,
in my view, explains why the patient was willing to talk to the GP. I also learned from the video
that MSE can be threatening to the patient and hence requires a lot of cooperation from the
patient. This is because I realized that the GP was keen to building a therapeutic relationship and
rapport with patient. She needed to first establish this rapport before engaging in the actual MSE.
I have also learned from the video that mental state of a patient colors the sensitivity and
accuracy of the whole medical history. This is why the GP chose to perform the MSE as preclude
of the rest of medical history. This would allow the GP have the assessment as a template against
which she can measure the accuracy of other history. Therefore, I learned that the GP wanted to
be successful by developing a style whereby she performs much of MSE via relatively
unstructured observation made in the course of routine physical and history. This is seen when
she begins by taking medical history of the patient and using the therapeutic communication
(verbal) and upholding professionalism to ensure that the patient fully cooperates (Otte et al.,
2016).
Specifically, GP says, “would you like to tell more about it.” This is a polite request
rather than a command to the patient because of the importance the GP puts on the way the
patient relates her history of her present low mood/depressive disorder (University of
Nottingham, 2012). I acknowledged that how a patient relates the history of her present low
mood is significant to the GP because it reveals much information about the overal appearance
alongside behavior, speech, alertness, affect, activity, and attitude all of which are important
domains in MSE. Therefore, I learned that GP imposed certain structure on such observations
and raised them from the subliminal impression level to clinically valuable behavior description.