Reflective Essay: Clinical Issues Faced by a Practicing Nurse

This essay presents a reflective analysis of a nurse's experiences within a healthcare setting, focusing on clinical issues, communication problems, and ethical dilemmas encountered during practice. The essay utilizes the Gibbs reflective cycle to structure the reflection, detailing descriptions of events, feelings experienced, evaluations of situations, analyses of challenges, conclusions drawn, and proposed action plans for future practice. Key areas of focus include meeting patient educational needs, navigating multidisciplinary healthcare teams, and addressing communication barriers with patients and their families. The nurse reflects on challenges related to patient understanding, managing patient expectations, and ethical considerations, particularly when dealing with difficult diagnoses. The essay concludes with insights gained and strategies for improving professional practice, including the importance of continuous learning and open communication with colleagues.

ESSAY

TABLE OF CONTENTS
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
Gibbs reflective cycle..................................................................................................................3
Action Plan..................................................................................................................................6
CONCLUSION................................................................................................................................6
REFERENCES................................................................................................................................7

INTRODUCTION
The report is reflection based on experiences of a nurse facing clinical issues, communication
issues and meeting the educational needs of patients. The reflection talks about how these issues
taught the individual and how they can be overcome. Gibbs reflection model has been also used
in the study. The objectives of the report are: a) To learn about communication issues.
b) To learn about ethical dilemmas faced by nurses.
c) To make patients understand their problems and guiding them.
Gibbs reflective cycle
It is one of the most famous cyclical model of reflection that contained six stages description,
feeling, analysis, evaluation, conclusion and action plan. Through this reflective cycle
individuals is able to review its experience, learn things and improved several areas for bright
future ahead. Furthermore it can be stated that in order to reflect on three clinical issues that I
have experience in past while practicing can be illustrated by making use of Gibbs reflective
cycles. Such as:
Description: It is first stage of gibbs reflective cycle that describe about the event, what has
actual happen, when and where and what the outcome of it. Likewise it is reflection based on one
of the my reflection pertaining to my previous experience where I work in healthcare
organisation. I was responsible for providing appropriate care, support and treatment to patient
so that it can be cure in limited time possible. There were three main clinical issue that I have
experience while working in healthcare organisation such as meeting the educational needs of
patient, families and others. Secondly I have face issue in performing function as a nurse in
multidisciplinary healthcare team (Chang, (2019). Third main issue that I have face in my
previous experience was regard to communication problem with client families and others. So,
all are these major clinical issue and ethical dilemmas that has been face by me while continue
my practices to delivered appropriate support and care to patient for their health and well being.
Feeling: The second stage is related to feeling such as what are individuals feeling at initial stage
and after the experiences, what it think about the situation and many more. Likewise my feeling
throughout my experience such as in initial stage I was quite happy and satisfied that I would be

undertake in responsibilities to provide care and support to patient so that they can life happy and
healthy lifestyles. But as soon my work experience increase I started facing challenges or issue
pertaining to clinical that has make me somewhat nervous, and lack of confidences. I was not
able to work in multidisciplinary healthcare team that felt me sad and disappointed but I have
decided to overcome these challenge in order to have higher growth and success in future
professional career. In addition to this due to lack communication skills I was unable to share my
feeling with my colleague that has resulted in increasing my stress and nervous. I think and feel
that I could not able to do but my passion and dedication has motivated me to overcome the issue
pertaining to the clinical practices for better outcome (Reynolds, (2017). So it can be concluded
that I have experience different types of feeling at different stages that has make me learnt new
things, area or skills that need to be improved to get more success and growth in future
professional career. I think the situation has helped me in understanding the way I need to have
control over my emotion and sentiment while offering services to patient for their benefits.
Evaluation: I have served as a nurse in a multi-disciplinary health care team and have seen many
changes and experiences in the health care sector. The health care in which I was working was of
different sections comprising of different specialities. Many patients thus came at the health unit
and handling them and their needs was our primary duty. I was working as a nurse in eye
department of the hospital. Our day used to start with noting down of particulars of patients and
then making them go as per number in the queue to the doctor. I used to take the particulars of
patients and make the slips to be taken by them to the doctor. The first problem I experienced
was making the patients give details of what actually the problem was happening with them.
Some patients were not able to explain their problem and I had to give them hints if these were
the actual symptoms they were facing, then they got an idea to reply. This was essential as there
was a column to be filled of diagnosis in the medical slip. I felt that here was a communication
barrier where patients needed to be aware of the symptoms and what was causing it and for how
long it has been there (Tawanwongsri & Phenwan, (2019)). I suggested my team that some
notice boards can be put up which can explain different eye symptoms and how they are caused.
Such informative boards, I felt would help patients in being aware of their problems. The
patients were not forthcoming in telling if the problem they were suffering was for longer
duration or not. They have to realise the fact that anything concealed by them is not going to

work for them in this sector as question was of their health. The second challenge which I faced
was of managing the patients to wait patiently for their turn. On OPD days, there used to be rush
and patients would want to get their turn sooner. I experienced that management skills are
required here too to manage people by persuading them to wait for some more time till their turn
comes up (Tawanwongsri & Phenwan, (2019)). Third challenge I faced was people being
unaware of how glasses need to be handled and kept with care. The main challenge was when the
patient had turned up late and disease had spread which required operation. During this period, it
was an uphill task to make patient understand about the problem and the necessity of operation. I
also faced an ethical dilemma where children were diagnosed with serious diseases in eye. That
moment, we as nurses had to convince the child that nothing was to be feared off and everything
will be fine if they followed the doctor’s advice. The patient’s parents had to be consoled by us
and it was a dilemma for us to handle the situation. The evaluation of my career has been an
uphill ride with roller coaster. The good and bad about the experiences of my career have been a
learning experience for me. The good experience was that I learnt a lot of people behaviour and
managing them as patients. I was able to learn to operate the eye number checker machine and it
has been a technical skill upgradation for me. It can be of use as I move up in my career. Other
positive things which happened were that I was able to get the support of doctors in making me
learn new tasks. The negative things being part of the parcel were there were very less leaves in
the profession and sometimes it led us to fatigue.
Analysis: The analysis of my career learnings are that whether it is a profession oof nurse or a
teacher, positivity is what will be the motivating force to take on new challenges everyday.
Positivity helps to cope with stress during tough times and secondly, knowledge of domain is
necessary for giving your best towards your profession (Constantinou, Andreou, Papageorgiou
& McCrorie, (2020).). My career has been fulfilling and things which went right was the tasks
being understood clearly and use of SOP as guided to us. Apart from this, self-decisions required
at some point also have been there but it did go wrong sometimes. These corrections were kept in
mind by me as I approached patients the next time.

Conclusion: I have learnt that one needs to be in a learning mode and open to suggestions from
seniors who have seen such situation before. Training should be taken seriously as it will be
serving as your friend when you have to achieve the tasks in health care sector.
Action Plan
Skills Resources Time line to achieve
Technical knowledge Optical equipment present at
health unit. Training session
enrolment as and when they
happen.
31 Jan 2022
Data recording of patients Guidance by seniors 20 Nov 2021
Briefing of various eye
diseases and precautions to
patients
Training sessions at health
care unit
30 Nov 2021
CONCLUSION
It can be concluded that Gibbs reflective cycle gave an insight in how the experience of nursing
profession taught different things to an individual which analysed from different perspectives
gave knowledge about domain and people management.

REFERENCES
Books and journals
Chang, B., (2019). Reflection in learning. Online Learning, 23(1). pp.95-110.
Reynolds, M., (2017). Organizing reflection. Routledge.
Tawanwongsri, W., & Phenwan, T. (2019). Reflective and feedback performances on Thai
medical students’ patient history-taking skills. BMC medical education, 19(1), 1-8.
Adeani, I. S., Febriani, R. B., & Syafryadin, S. (2020). USING GIBBS’REFLECTIVE CYCLE
IN MAKING REFLECTIONS OF LITERARY ANALYSIS. Indonesian EFL
Journal, 6(2), 139-148.
Sekarwinahyu, M., Rustaman, N. Y., Widodo, A., & Riandi, R. (2019, February). Development
of problem based learning for online tutorial program in plant development using Gibbs’
reflective cycle and e-portfolio to enhance reflective thinking skills. In Journal of
Physics: Conference Series (Vol. 1157, No. 2, p. 022099). IOP Publishing.
Constantinou, C. S., Andreou, P., Papageorgiou, A., & McCrorie, P. (2020). Critical Reflection
on Own Beliefs for Cultural Competence in Medical Education: an Analysis of Tutors’
Reflective Narratives. Qualitative Research in Education, 9(3), 273-299.