Nursing Assignment 1: Reflection on Chronic Illness and Care

This nursing assignment is a reflection on patient care, focusing on the impact of chronic illness, specifically prostate cancer, on the patient's mental state and the nurse's perspective. The student analyzes a blog from the Cancer Resource Center written by Bob Riter, a patient diagnosed with prosta...Read More

Running head: NURSING ASSIGNMENT
NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Name of the student
Name of the university
Author note

1NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Reflection is an aspect for individuals, for their personal and professional life, so that
they can learn from their own practices and understand the aspects that are important for their
growth and development (Walker& Mann, 2016).While undergoing critical health condition,
patients usually undergo critical mental conditions and depending upon their ability to
perceive their illness and recovery, their severity of disease is determined (Karimi et al.,
2017). While working as a nursing professional, I care for many patients however their
understanding, their struggle and their meaning of health has always been a mystery.
Recently, I had the opportunity to go through several survival stories of the cancer
patients, and within these the blogs of Bob Riter in the Cancer Resource Center attracted my
attention. In this paper, using the five R’s of the process, I would be discussing the way this
blog posts of Bob helped me to change my thinking of recovery and illness.
Reporting
Bob Riter (56) has been diagnosed with prostate cancer in the year 2017 and like any
other individual suffering from critical health conditions, he also felt devastated and
destroyed after being diagnosed with cancer (Cancer Resource Center, 2017). Through a
beautiful poetry, he mentions about his mental state while suffering from disease condition.
However, after some day, he started looking at the positives of this situation and decided to
spread awareness about his suffering, his complications and started uploading his blogs on
the cancer resource center blogs (Cancer Resource Center, 2017). His blogs are focused for
the decision making, effective treatment, educating patients about complications that may
arise due to such complications (Cancer Resource Center, 2017). Through his description of
mental stress and his journey towards accepting the truth and living his life for the betterment
of the society influenced me to understand the patient’s perception, while suffering from
critical diseases and changed my thought process in every dimension.

2NURSING ASSIGNMENT
Responding
After reading the blogs posted by Bob on that particular website, I was able to
understand the mental trauma he suffered from while undergoing the conditions. After being
diagnosed with cancer, he was also concerned about his life and was not being able to focus
on the interventions. However, due to spirituality and his own determination, he diverted his
thought process from his deteriorated health condition and started writing blogs for the
betterment of multiple cancer patients that are unable to stay positive or stay strong while
undergoing critical health condition (Sharma et al., 2016). I was able to understand that Bob’s
mental strength, his ability to overcome critical conditions helped him to focus on the
brighter side of his life and I should also focus on these aspects while providing care to
patients in my nursing profession.
Relating
Research conducted by Hopman and Rijken (2015) has indicate to the fact traumatic
condition and the awareness of severity of the disease has both positive and negative aspects
on the physical and mental health of the patient. However, it is up to the patient to perceive
their complication positively or negatively and hence, despite physical complication, mental
trauma affects the patients drastically. I also related to this situation as while providing care
to terminally or critically ill patients, I have seen their pain and agony and hence, it was an
important aspect for me to understand these and provide them with courage so that they could
struggle with their illness. Hence, I decided to develop therapeutic relationship and maintain
compassionate care for the patients.
Reasoning

3NURSING ASSIGNMENT
The reasoning of this decision could be found in the recent researches and as per
Dawson-Rose et al. (2016) therapeutic relationship is the aspect that helps the nursing
professional to develop a rapport with the patient and understand their concerns, so that
effective interventions for those complications could be implemented. Further, through this
relationship, patients are also able to understand the complications they are suffering from
and the increasing knowledge of their health complication would help them to develop trust
in the care process (Tsai & Lee, 2016).
Reconstructing
This complete analysis of the blog reflection of Bob helped me to understand the
complications and mental struggle of each patient while going through critical health
conditions. In my future care endeavors, I would also use this therapeutic relationship with
my patients so that I could help them to overcome their mental stress and depression. Further,
it would help them to enhance their health literacy that would eventually increase their trust
on the care system (Tsai & Lee, 2016).

4NURSING ASSIGNMENT
References
Cancer Resource Center. (2017). Decision-making with cancer. Retrieved 22 August 2019,
from http://www.crcfl.net/index.php/decision-making-with-cancer/
Dawson-Rose, C., Cuca, Y. P., Webel, A. R., Báez, S. S. S., Holzemer, W. L., Rivero-
Méndez, M., ... & Reyes, D. (2016). Building trust and relationships between patients
and providers: An essential complement to health literacy in HIV care. Journal of the
Association of Nurses in AIDS Care, 27(5), 574-584.
Hopman, P., & Rijken, M. (2015). Illness perceptions of cancer patients: relationships with
illness characteristics and coping. Psycho
‐Oncology, 24(1), 11-18.
Karimi, S., Haghani, F., Yamani, N., & Najafi Kalyani, M. (2017). A qualitative inquiry into
nursing students’ experience of facilitating reflection in clinical setting. The Scientific
World Journal, 2017.
Sharma, A., Kudesia, P., Shi, Q., & Gandhi, R. (2016). Anxiety and depression in patients
with osteoarthritis: impact and management challenges. Open access rheumatology:
research and reviews, 8, 103.
Tsai, T. I., & Lee, S. Y. D. (2016). Health literacy as the missing link in the provision of
immigrant health care: A qualitative study of Southeast Asian immigrant women in
Taiwan. International journal of nursing studies, 54, 65-74.
Walker, M., & Mann, R. A. (2016). Exploration of mindfulness in relation to compassion,
empathy and reflection within nursing education.