Medical Form Filling & Communication Skills in Nursing Practice

This essay reflects on the importance of medical form filling and communication skills during the transition to professional nursing practice. It critically analyzes the clinical skill of administering patient medical forms, emphasizing the need for accuracy and attention to detail, and the non-clinical skill of communication, highlighting its role in sharing information and ensuring positive clinical outcomes. The essay discusses the Dreyfus’ model of skill acquisition and Benner’s model of clinical competence, explaining the stages a nurse passes through from novice to expert. Using Rolfe’s model of reflection, the author assesses their strengths in medical form filling and communication, linking them to the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia standards. The reflection identifies areas for improvement, particularly in interpreting electronic data forms, and outlines steps to enhance these skills for a successful transition to a field practitioner. The essay concludes that continuous learning and skill development are essential for meeting nursing standards and providing quality patient care. Desklib provides access to past papers and solved assignments for students.

Running head: BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 1
Being a professional nursing
Student’s Name
University

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 2
Being a professional nursing
Introduction
Being a nursing professional means having the skills and abilities to carry out nurses
roles relevant to the profession. Every qualified nursing practitioner is supposed to be licensed
which means that they hold the power to exercise their nursing skills and make decisions based
on their judgment and understanding of the nursing situation (Wilkinson, Rance, & Fitzsimmons,
2017). Student nurses require the medical form filling clinical skill and the communication non-
clinical skill to work well in their setting. Therefore, practitioners need to be guided by a code of
practice that defines their profession and the standards established by the Nursing and Midwifery
Board of Australia. This essay reflects on the importance of medical form filling skill and
communication skills during transition to practice.
Critical analysis
One clinical skill that I require as a beginner nurse is administration of patient’s medical
forms within the clinical setting. As a practitioner nurse, administration of all forms of
medication is one of the vital skills that I need to manage. This skill is based on capturing patient
data by administering different forms to patients. The forms can include capturing of basic
information like demography, medical history and the signs or symptoms that the patient feels
(Burns & Poster, 2008). The information filled in the forms is part of the overall decision making
that will be made on the patient. For example, patient allergies have to be captured well to avoid
drugs that the patient can react with. According to Boxer & Kluge (2000) one positive aspect that
this skills gives me is the ability to be keen on detail which improves the ability to capture all
patient details critical for decision making. Administration of medical forms requires every
patient detail to be captured including signs and symptoms. The practitioner is supposed to verify

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 3
patient information for accuracy before feeling in the form. However, one weakness of this skill
is there may be challenges in administering the form if the practitioner is not skilled well.
Therefore, the practitioner needs to study the forms well to be able to meet the required clinical
standards.
New nursing practitioners also require the non-clinical skill of communication within
medical settings. This entails passing, receiving and sharing information within the workplace
where documentation means gathering information and recording it according to the required.
This makes it easy for other practitioners to interpret what the nurse has written (Campbell,
Shepherd, McGrail, Kassell, Connolly, Williams & Nestel, 2015). Communication allows the
practitioner to interact with patients and at the same time share information with other
practitioners about the patient. The practitioners also use communication skills to share
information with other practitioners. In a clinical environment, practitioners have to pass
information to patients and their families and at the same time share information with fellow
practitioners. With the use of proper communication skills, practitioners are able to pass
information from one level to another. One strength that this skill offers is that it leads to
provision of reliable information within clinical settings. Clinical outcomes are dependent on
communication skills that increase clinical outcomes. However, one weakness that this skill
offers is that if the message is not framed well, it can be wrongly interpreted thus leading to poor
outcomes or distortion. This can compromise the clinical outcome thus affecting the expected
results. Further, Higgins, Spencer & Kane (2010) suggest that the non-nursing skills of
confidence is important in ensuring that the practitioner believes in knowledge acquired and the
individual ability to make decisions.
Discussion of theories

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 4
Several theories have been presented to explain the process of being a nursing
practitioner. The Dreyfus’ model of skill acquisition is based on acquiring skills through formal
instruction and practicing. The model exists on four binary qualities of recollection, recognition,
decision, and awareness. The qualities lead to five nursing roles of novice, beginner, competent,
proficient and expert. In each of the stage, the student acquires skills that make them more
competent and with time they depend less on the abstract principles but rely more on concrete
experience based on the nature of the task (RaleigH, DClinPrac, & Allan, 2018). The novice
individual relies more on nursing knowledge without connecting to practice thus the work they
do is unlikely to be satisfactory (Freunda, Everettb, Griffith, Hudond, Naccarellae & Laurant ,
2015). The competent level individual has good working and background knowledge of the
practice that they work in and they are fit for the purpose that they do thus see their actions in
terms of the long term goals of the organization. The proficient level expert has in an in-depth
understanding of the discipline and the area of practice thus sees the overall picture of how they
fit their actions with the rest of the organization (Burns & Poster, 2008). Lastly, the expert level
is based on being authoritative with knowledge of the discipline and tacit understanding of the
practice which enables the practitioner to see the overall picture and alternative approaches to be
taken.
Benner model presents five stages of clinical competence that an individual passes
through. The stages are designed from the Dreyfus model that focusses on the acquisition and
development of skills through the stages of the novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient
and expert (Alligood, 2014). The levels reflect three aspects of skilled performance of reliance
on abstract principles, change in the learner's perception of the nursing situation and change from
the detached observer to an involved practitioner engaged in nursing situations.

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 5
These stages are the novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient and expert. The
novice lacks the experience of nursing situations that they need to perform thus they need to be
taught rules to perform. The rules that such practitioners apply are universal rather than context
based. The advanced beginner can demonstrate marginally acceptable performance through
coping with real-life situations that teach them how to apply principles of nursing. This means
that the practitioner at this level begins learning how to apply nursing principles (McEwen &
Wills, 2014). The competent stage is where the nurse has been on the job for over two years and
can view their actions in terms of long-range goals. At this level, the practitioner develops plans
based conscious, analytical and abstract. The competency at this stage is important in achieving
competence efficiency and organization. The proficient stage is the performer stage where the
practitioner learns from typical events that they engage in thus making them recognize the
expected normal picture (McCarthy, Buckley, Engel, Forth, Adams & Cameron, 2013).
. The practitioner at this level uses maxims as guides that reflect an understanding of the
situation. Lastly, the expert level practitioner has an intuitive grasp of situations and zeroes in on
the actual problem that the patient faces. This means that the practitioner relies more on
experience rather than the use of principles.
Reflection
Rolfe’s model of reflection offers three steps for reflection through looking at what
happened, what the situation means and what can be done as an action plan. According to the
first stage, as I transition to a full-time nursing practitioner I believe I have gained enough
knowledge for filling of medical forms with different patient’s within clinical settings. This
strength is linked to the fourth standard of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia
standard of comprehensively conducting assessments on patient’s problems (Nursing and

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 6
Midwifery Board Australia, 2018). This entails analyzing information and data from patients
through the use of different assessment tools to collect relevant information and data about the
patient. Further, my communication skills strength is linked to the second standard of engaging
in therapeutic and professional relationships (Cashin, et al., 2015). Through communication
skills, I am able to relate well with patients thus increasing clinical outcomes.
As I become a field practitioner the second stage of the model deals with so what which
leads to what the experience means. From the nursing and non-nursing skill, I am able to work
well within medical settings since I have the ability to relate well with the patients which create
therapeutic relationships for collecting and analyzing medical information. Brown & Crookes
(2016), suggests that practitioners keep on learning with the experience that they gather in the
field as they move from one stage to another. This means that I have to improve my skills to
become a more informed and experienced practitioner.
The last stage entails the steps that I will take to improve communication skills.
Therefore, as I transition into a nursing practitioner, I have to undergo more training especially in
the filling of medical forms and interpreting electronic data forms. This skill will improve my
assessment ability which allows me to improve my data interpretation skills through increased
ability to analyze different data forms like graphs and tables for patient data. Therefore, as I
transition from a student practitioner to a field practitioner, I have to strengthen my clinical skill
of filling medical forms and non-nursing skill of communication to become a better practitioner
who meets the two standards of the Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia.
Conclusion
The nursing practitioner must pass through different nursing stages before they can
become experts in their field. As they pass through each stage, they acquire new skills and

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 7
develop competencies that make them more informed and able to work in clinical situations. The
practitioner moves from novice, beginner, competent, proficient and to an expert level which
makes one informed and ready to work in any clinical environment. therefore practitioners need
to make the effort of meeting the requirement of every stage while at the same time develop key
skills that are important in meeting the nursing standards set by the Nursing and Midwifery
Board of Australia.

BEING A PROFESSIONAL NURSING 8
References
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