Reflective Cycle in Nursing Practice

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INTRODUCTION
Reflection is the art of trying to disseminate information, decisions or actions about
phenomena. Nurses offer holistic care to the patients in any health institution and therefore
reflection is an important part of progress and development in the nursing practice. Reflection of
health care systems, human biology, environment and lifestyle. Its inevitable that in the course of
his / her career, a nurse will face different scenarios depending on the kind of environment she is
in and the kind of influencing factors. (WHO, 2002).
DESCRIPTION
A 2-year-old child is admitted to the hospital with symptoms such as fever, moderate
shaking chills, sweating. She vomits and the mother reports that she has been experiencing
diarrhea for since the night before. She has also complained of a headache. From the active
physical signs, the nurse can tell that the little girl has active malaria symptoms and therefore
recommends that they check her vitals. The child cries a lot as she is scared of treatment and her
pain as can be seen from her dilated eyes is quite advanced. She needs treatment soon but
treatment can’t be diagnosed without proper diagnosis. The nurse needs to take her vitals so as to
send a report to the doctor together with the recorded notes of what the mother has reported for
advanced checkups.
FEELINGS
As a nurse, one is always aware at the back of one's mind that events such as these are
bound to happen since it's a health institution, and different clients check in with different
illnesses and conditions. Some suffer biologically, others mentally and others psychologically.
The nurse can’t help but feel sympathetic towards the little girl and the mother as the little girl is

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in severe pain but her pain won’t let her get the help she needs. More to that, the mother seems
torn between allowing the nurse to check the child by whatsoever means and making sure that
the baby feels protected from her fears. As a nurse, I cannot help but remember a time in my
younger age when I was in the little girl’s shoes and needed treatment for Malaria but was too
afraid of syringes and any other sharp objects that I just wouldn’t allow the doctor to check up on
me or administer treatment. To me, the doctor was much worse than the illness I was suffering
from as he gave me bitter oils and one to two shots of painful medication through a syringe
(Ghanim, 2005).
EVALUATION
The nurse takes time to explain to the mother the necessary procedures to be taken in
order to treat the little girls condition as she hands over the girl a little paly color puzzle. The
little girl seems to lighten up and now looks at the nurse as a friend. Being that the little one has
to be treated in order to feel better. Th ensure takes a soft approach to address the big elephant in
the little girl’s eye. Her temperature needs to be checked as well as her blood pressure, weight
and a blood work analysis. She decided from the simple tasks to the more complicated tasks so
as to build up the little girl’s confidence. She Explains that she will just take a peek into her ear
to check for a bad person that may be whispering in her year. She is able to record her body
temperature. She also checks for her body weight by placing her on a weighing balance as she
plays around with the thermometer. She then places the little girl on the seat and explains to her
that they need to look for any bad friend that may be in her body and so they have to press on the
hand a little bit to see if the bad person is there. The child is able to remain calm. As she checks
for the blood pressure, she talks to the kid about playing and who her friends are and what
cartoon she likes to watch. She records her blood pressure (Bortz, 2004).