Reflective Journal on Effective Teamwork and Autocratic Leadership

Running head: REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

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REFLECTIVE JOURNAL
Introduction:
Reflection and composing a piece of self reflecting writing are intricately associated with
one of the best effective healthcare practices by the professionals. This procedure helps in the
developing of the skills along with the proper reviewing of the effectiveness in place of carrying
on doing actions that are always done (Lutfiya et al., 2016). This helps in improving the ways by
which healthcare professionals work and also help in carrying on the learning procedures
throughout their lives. It helps in developing confidence and thereby makes the healthcare
professionals become more proactive and qualified professionals (Wald et al., 2015). Some of
the benefits are increased learning from an experience or situation, promotion of in-depth
learning, identification of the personal and professional strengths and area of improvement,
educational needs and many others (Tolks et al., 2016). This assignment would be mainly based
on the reflection carried out on some of the most important incidents that occurred and will also
shed light about how reflection on such incidents had helped me to develop as better
professionals. Gibb reflective framework would be used.
Journal 1: effective teamwork:
While working in the rehabilitation ward, I was given the duty of nursing and caring a
65-year-old woman who had faced stroke and was shifted to the ward after emergency treatment
as care-coordinator. During the time of working in the ward, I saw different issues coming up
every day that affected the patient care and the patient satisfaction. Medication error had
occurred where the delegated nurse did not communicate with the nurse f the previous shift and
administered the medication again resulting in increasing of the dose. When I tried to inquire
about the situation, blames games started where one nurse was blaming the other entirely and no

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one was ready to accept their faults. Moreover, the different experts like physiotherapist, the
occupational therapist and the dietician contradicted each other’s treatment to the patient. This
made the patient nervous as she though the other expert was providing the worn treatment and
care. Moreover, they complained about the other professionals on different notes and all these
created several issues. The senior nurses went to the patient and saw her having a particular diet
given by the junior nurse and shouted on her in front of the patient. Although the junior nurses
stated that she had followed the doctors’ guidelines, the senior nurse did not trust her and took
away the food. I was not able to understand why so many issues occurred and tried my best to
reach to the root of the issues. More, I tried to solve their conflicts, more they were seen to be
becoming rebellious. I received a complaint from the family members that we were not
providing effective and safe care and that they are concerned with health of patient.
I was quite upset from the occurrence of the entire situation. I was quite shocked about
how the rehabilitation professionals lacked proper team building spirits that affected the mental
and physical health of the patient. I was disappointed that being the care-coordinator, I could not
fulfill the responsibility that was assigned to me for managing and coordinating with the
healthcare professionals and maintain the healthcare functions smoothly. I was feeling helpless at
one time; where I noticed that nothing was going according to my plans and advises. I felt bad
that my poor management of the teamwork ultimately affected the health of the patient and she
was not being able to receive high quality and safe care that met her requirements. However, I
did not lose confidence over my skills and attributes. Therefore, I decided to undertake more
researches into the incident and find out the cases so that such issues do not repeat in the future.
Ineffective teamwork was mainly found to be the reason that resulted in failure of proper
evidence-based care of the patient that resulted in patient and family dissatisfaction. One of the

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most important outcomes that resulted in ineffective outcome was negative health impacts of the
patient. Researchers are of the opinion that ineffective teamwork results in communication
issues, missed interventions, long waiting times of the patients, medication errors, and trust
issues with the patient, emotional turmoil in the patients (Casimiro et al., 2015). The patient in
the incident had noticed ineffective teamwork that had affected the patient resulting in concerns
between the patient and loss of trust. Therefore, the bad part of the incident was that the
ineffective teamwork had affected the health of the patient both physically and mentally. This
even affected the reputation of the hospital. The only good part was that it helped me in learning
that I do not have proper knowledge about the team working attributes and i needed to develop
more knowledge and skills in maintaining effective teams.
On close analysis, I came to understand certain important attributes of team learning
which I have not emphasized before the rehabilitation planning took place. One of the most
important attribute that I had noticed in the incident was entire lack of trust and bonding.
Researchers are of the opinion that the presence of trust and bonding among the members are
extremely important for maintain of effective teamwork. This helps each of the employees in
understanding each other’s strengths, weakness and interest (Rosen et al., 2018). Often, this is
shown to reduce stress and fatigue among the members by the distribution of emotional and
physical work burden and helps in achieving the team goals effectively. Complete lack of trust
and bonding were found between not only the junior and the senior nurses that reflected from the
food incident of the patient but also among the junior nurses who made the medication errors.
Power struggle was also observed among the different healthcare professionals from the various
incidents that were reported to me (Weller, Boyd & Cumin, 2014). Power struggles also impact
effective teamwork as different types of complexes are seen to play among the employees that