Reflective Essay on a Nursing Student's Hospital Excursion Experience

This reflective essay details a nursing student's experience during a hospital excursion. The student recounts observing interactions between nurses and patients, highlighting a specific incident where a nurse's approach to medication conflicted with the patient's wishes and professional nursing standards. The essay reflects on the importance of therapeutic relationships, patient autonomy, and the application of the Registered Nurse standards for practice. The student analyzes the situation, considering the nurse's perspective and the challenges of balancing patient care with professional guidelines. The experience prompts the student to consider how they would approach similar situations, emphasizing the importance of clear communication, understanding patient needs, and creating a comfortable environment for healing. The essay concludes with a determination to provide effective and compassionate care, incorporating the lessons learned from the hospital visit.

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
Name of Student
Name of University
Author’s Note

1REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
I was overwhelmed on becoming a part of school excursion to a hospital for practical
knowledge of the working principles of a Nurse, achieving my goal of life. I have been dreaming
of this day since my childhood. It was the day of excursion and I was too excited and nervous at
the same time, excited because I was about to experience something which I love and nervous
because I would observe how Nurses deal and interact with real life patients, doctors and other
people from the hospital organization (Holloway and Galvin, 2016). As the no. of students were
less, each students were guided by respective Nurse. The Nurse named Anna guided me. Anna
was appointed for the ward no. 7 which was a general ward. On reaching the general ward, I saw
many patients lying on beds and doctors along with the nurses examining patients respectively.
In total, there were 10 beds, of which two were empty. I sensed that a bit of tension going around
on bed no. 7, I leaned forward to know about the scenario. An intense argument was going on
between the patient of bed 7 and its respective nurse. After further argument, I was curious to
know about the reason of the argument, which was that the patient was not ready for medication
through injection but the nurse was forcing regardless of patient’s disagreement. Being an
undergraduate Nursing student, we have been taught seven standards, for efficient practicing
(Slatyer et al., 2016). These standards are known as Registered Nurse standards for practice.
Among these standards, the Standard 2 is “Engages in Therapeutic and Professional
relationships” (Mahlanze, Sibiya and Govender, 2015), which clearly mentions to co-ordinate
with the patient in terms of medication for efficient health outcomes (Parahoo, 2014). In this
situation, the nurse opposed the standard two of Registered Nurse standards for practice by
imposing her method of medication and disrespecting the patient’s desire of medication.
Anna said that being a nurse is not an easy task and the main motive is to embrace the
relationships with patients in such a way that it diversifies the common professional and personal

2REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
relationship (Nash and Harvey, 2017). Nurses were supposed to correspond to patients in a
respectful way (Priebe et al., 2014), keeping the patient’s desires and needs on top (Robson et al.,
2013), and to understand that the patient’s life experiences can help more than the medications in
terms of healing. Nurses have to support my patient’s decisions and have to guide him/her for
better health outcomes. The basic requirement of being a nurse is to understand and
communicate clearly with the patient (Gorski, 2017), in order to have all required knowledge
related to the medication procedure of the patient, so that a modified and helpful health care plan
is organized. Being a witness of such violating scenario, I was in dismay. I was thinking about
the patient’s feelings and how the patient would have felt when the required medications where
imposed on him (Neuss et al., 2016). I was not in the position to speak in between the nurse and
patient, so ghastly I left from that scenario. I was feeling horrible on my inability to do
something for that patient. It was not easy for me to gasp the incident, which happened almost on
the first few hours of the beginning of my excursion.
Anna was assisting a woman patient on bed no. 5, who was suffering from general
weakness. She was asked to maintain her glucose level from time to time and the basic hourly
check-up like blood pressure and heart beat. Anna explained me the importance of hourly check-
up. When the patient woke up from the sleep, I greeted her and introduced myself. I asked for
any kind of assistance she needed, she denied. Because of the earlier incident, I was not feeling
good about myself and probably it was all on my face, because of which the patient asked if
anything was wrong. I could not say anything, then on my behalf Anna explained the entire
scenario and she started laughing, I could not interpret the reason behind her laugh. The patient
then explained to me that this was nothing new; in fact, this scenario is of daily basis. She said
that the patient on bed 7 is very grumpy and none of the nurses is willing to assist him. I did not

3REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
agree with the patient, because the behavior of the patient on bed no. 7 is might be because of the
illness and the nurses should provide extreme comfort and assistance to help the patient. At least
this is what we have been taught in our entire course of Nursing to develop a cordial relationship
with the patient (Bridges et al., 2013) but modifying both personal and professional relationship.
After communicating with the patient and Anna, I realized that in reality, the situation
plays an important role and we should be able to amend those standards in such a way that we do
not even oppose the standards and at the same time, the patient is being treated efficiently
(Sastre‐Fullana et al., 2014). I tried to analyze the situation deeply to understand the reason
behind the nurse’s nature. After certain introspection, I was certain that the nurses could have
tried their best in order to manage with the patient’s behavior, because according to the standard
two of the Registered Nurse standards for practice the nurses are supposed to supervise and co-
ordinate with the patient’s behavior in the entire course of treatment.
I was very certain regarding the misbehavior of the nurse, appointed to bed no. 7. In
addition, I was hoping if there could be anything, which I could do in order to serve the patient
on bed no. 7. No matter what the behavior, nature, caste, belief, culture, or values of the patient,
the nurse’s main motive should be to treat them regardless of their caste, creed or religion
(Butterworth and Faugier, 2013). The nurses should abide by the eight different standards of the
Registered Nurse standards for efficient practicing.
I was thinking what all I could have done for the patient on bed no. 7 like I would have
made sure that do my best to treat the patient as soon as possible. I would have talked to the
patient regarding his life experiences, his likes/dislikes, and supported him for his viewpoints
and at the same time supervised him for his decisions (Sarani et al., 2016). I think

4REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
communicating with patients helps them to come out of their shell of insecurity and makes them
believe in themselves, I definitely would have tried to have a conversation with the patient. I
would have made the patient feel comfortable so that the patient would be able to self-heal. I
enjoyed my excursion and thanked Anna for guiding me and showing me the reality. I was
determined while going back to college that I will try my level best to provide effective treatment
to my patients.

5REFLECTIVE ESSAY ON NURSING
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