Time Management in Nursing

Running head:TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
Name of the Student
Name of the university
Author’s note

1TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
Time management in nursing
Introduction
Reflective practice in nursing is an essential curriculum in nursing. Reflective practice is
an essential factor for the development of a crucial, autonomous and advanced practitioners.
Reflecting on the daily experiences helps the nurses to enhance nursing care and have a better
understanding of the actions and the practices. Through reflective practice I would focus on the
issue of time management, that most of the graduate nurses’ face while in practice. This essay
would discuss about the possible strategies to overcome the challenges related to time
management. I did my placement in the aged care and the rehabilitation at the Fairfield hospital,
NSW, where I had faced subsequent difficulties regarding time management issues. The paper
would also provide examples from personal practices supported by authentic literary sources.
Personal experience and strategies for effective time management
The nurses have to work in an environment with his workload that necessitates efficient
leadership and the management skills (Kaya et al. 2015). One of the skills is the time
management behavior of the nurses. As per the experts, prevention of the wastage of time and
having control over the time can lead to improvement of the managerial abilities, reduction of
stresses , preservation of the human resources and ultimately leads to job satisfaction (Häfner,
Oberst & Stock 2014). According to a study done by Ebrahimi et al. (2014) the graduate nurses
on a neonatal unit, five main factors have been identified- Knowing, planning, fulfillment,
adaptation and flexibility, which helps the nurses to manage their time more efficiently. As a

2TRANSITION TO PROFESSIONAL PRACTICE-NURSING
graduate nurse I can relate to the several above factors and is aware that I need to work on these
five themes in order to adopt the time management skills.
“Knowing” is important for the nurses to manage time on this unit (Rush et al. 2015). It is
necessary for the graduate nurses to assess the patient carefully, otherwise more time would be
spent on the patients looking for the effective interventions (Liu et al. 2016). Knowing about the
condition of the patient would make the graduate nurses less anxious.
Secondly, proper planning is required, which involves chalking out the daily plans and
delegation of the important tasks. Planning the activities of the basis of the priorities helps to
manage time effectively. Again novice nurses should not hesitate to seek help from the peers. As
per the NMBA standards of nursing nurses should reflect upon their activities and obtain
feedback from their peers. Experienced seniors can help the graduate nurses to figure out the
time wasters and effectively manage time(Chernomas & Shapiro 2013).
Adaptation and flexibility in nursing is extremely important to inculcate the time
management skills. Nurses often have to encounter unpredictable and adverse events like
shortage of the resources or time. In that case nurses should not waste time and should work
promptly to figure out the alternative ways of care without feeling less stressed while managing
time on the unit (Chernomas& Shapiro 2013).
Barriers to effective time management
While transitioning from student nurse to a staff nurse, the graduate nurses faces
challenges and require time to adapt themselves to a new environment. This transition period
calls for experimentation and exploration of the challenges encountered by the freshly graduate
nurses (Rush et al. 2015). While encountering with the new challenges, the nurses often face