Reflective Essay: Analysis of Unprofessional Nursing Behaviors

This reflective essay analyzes a case study involving a nurse's unprofessional conduct, detailing violations of ethical codes such as inadequate documentation, failure to provide medication, and improper patient care. The essay examines the severe consequences of these actions, including potential infections, increased health complications, and even patient death. The author reflects on the nurse's mistakes, attributing them to carelessness and a lack of essential skills. The essay emphasizes the importance of adherence to nursing protocols, decision-making frameworks, and ethical guidelines to prevent similar errors. The author also discusses how this case will influence their future professional practice, aiming to avoid the mistakes made by the nurse and improve their clinical skills and patient care approach.

Running head: REFLECTIVE ESSAY
REFLECTIVE ESSAY
Name of the Student
Name of the University
Author Note

1REFLECTIVE ESSAY
The steps that a nurse should follow to provide appropriate care include assessment of
the situation, diagnosis of the diseases, outcome or planning the way of treatment,
implementation of the techniques and the final evaluation (Simmons & Rahman, 2014). But
in this case study, it is quite evident that the nurse had not followed any of this step. On top of
that, she further neglected the duties she was assigned and thus, it can be understood that the
nurse violated the guidelines a nurse should follow to take proper care of the patients under
her charge. In this study, the unprofessional activity of the nurse will be discussed in details
and how this will help me to be more careful in future endeavours.
The five acts of unprofessional conducts are violation of the code of ethics which
includes maintenance of proper documentation about the patient and disease history, the
quality of care, patient safety, patient-centred care and clinical skill (Epstein & Turner, 2015).
The nurse failed to do the proper documentation of the patients under her charge, failed to do
the pre-operative documentation, forgot to note the vital status of the patients, she failed to
provide the medications to the patients and failed to apply a proper dressing. Thus, the nurse
in this clinical scenario violated all these codes of ethics that a nurse should maintain strictly
(Lachman, Swanson & Winland-Brown, 2015).
The consequences of these unprofessional conducts can be grieveous. The Patient
Safety Act states the nurses should take utmost care of the patients by providing medications
from time to time, along with taking care of other necessary duties of patient care (World
Health Organization, 2017). Providing quality care along with maintaining patient safety is
extremely important that should be followed in all the hospitals and the health care
professionals should follow them minutely to ensure proper patient care. However, as the
concerned nurse failed to provide care as per the regulation, the patients might contract any
infection during the faulty dressing, might get any other additional health complications

2REFLECTIVE ESSAY
because of using the wrong solution to wash the CVC line and because of not providing the
medication the complications might increase rather than decrease.
It is an important duty of nurses to document all the patients’ details who are getting
admission to a hospital to know about their history of diseases and the medications they took
for those diseases (Mykkänen, Miettinen & Saranto, 2016). This helps in the assessment of
the current complications and finding out the process in which the treatment might proceed.
After this, the nurses should make charts of the process of therapy as instructed by the
doctors. The nurses should note the things they need to perform for a day before taking
charge of a shift from the nurse working in the ward in the last shift so that the treatment
proceed without any hindrance. They should also note the patients who would undergo an
operation on a particular day to take the pre-operative measures. The nurses should use their
skills of nursing and decision making framework and also maintain the code of ethics while
performing these duties (Mallari & Tariman, 2016). If a nurse fails to follow these rules as
the concerned nurse had, it would have grave consequences like spreading of the disease,
contraction of newer infections and might also result in the death of a patient.
My impression on a nurse making this many mistakes in patient care is neither
expected nor accepted. The mistakes the concerned nurse has committed are results of utter
carelessness and lack of skills in decision making and lack of knowledge. The case also hints
towards the nurse’s disability to handle various medical instruments, thus, makes mistakes in
conducting dressing and tests. Her inability to document the patients’ condition and
proceeding proves her inefficiency in the documentation and assessing which are essential
qualities a nurse should possess. The above-mentioned mistakes might lead to more severe
patient condition and the patients might end up contracting more infections. It can also
proceed towards their death. So, it is essential for a nurse to maintain all the steps for proper

3REFLECTIVE ESSAY
nursing and implement the decision making framework during their duty which would
enhance their ability to make appropriate decisions during treatment.
The nurse’s experience and mistakes will affect my workings surely as a health
care team member. Her lack of skills and misdeeds will help me to sharpen my skills to such
an extent that I do not end up making the mistakes that the nurse did. This will also help me
to be careful during the duration of my work so that I commit no such errors unknowingly.

4REFLECTIVE ESSAY
REFERENCES
Epstein, B., & Turner, M. (2015). The nursing code of ethics: Its value, its history. OJIN: The
Online Journal of Issues in Nursing, 20(2), 1-10.
Lachman, V. D., Swanson, E. O. C., & Winland-Brown, J. (2015). The New'Code of Ethics
for Nurses with Interpretative Statements'(2015): Practical Clinical Application, Part
II. MedSurg Nursing, 24(5), 363.
Mallari, M. G. D., & Tariman, J. D. (2016). Ethical frameworks for decision-making in
nursing practice and research: an integrative literature review. J Nurs. Pract. Appl.
Rev. Res, 7(1).
Mykkänen, M., Miettinen, M., & Saranto, K. (2016). Standardized Nursing Documentation
Supports Evidence-Based Nursing Management. In Nursing Informatics (pp. 466-
470).
Simmons, S.F. and Rahman, A.N., 2014. Next steps for achieving person-centered care in
nursing homes. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 15(9),
pp.615-619.
World Health Organization. (2017). Patient safety: making health care safer (No.
WHO/HIS/SDS/2017.11). World Health Organization.