Nursing Profession Reflective Essay: Skills, Goals, and Practice

This essay, written by a nursing student, delves into the core aspects of the nursing profession, emphasizing the importance of reflective practice for registered nurses. The essay begins by defining reflective practice and its significance in continuous professional development, highlighting its role in enhancing self-awareness, emotional intelligence, and clinical skills. It then outlines key skills and attitudes essential for nurses, such as compassion, communication, critical thinking, and adaptability. Furthermore, the essay incorporates a career action plan, detailing the student's aspirations, strengths, and areas for improvement, with a focus on developing time management and teamwork skills. The plan utilizes SMART goals to guide the student's progress, incorporating both curricular and extracurricular activities to achieve career objectives. The essay concludes with references to scholarly articles supporting the discussed concepts.

NURSING PROFESSION
Student Name: Aisha Yacoub
Essay title: Nursing profession.
Word count: 850
Yacad1702
Aisha Yacoub

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NURSING PROFESSION
Reflective practice can be defined as the ability of professionals to reflect on their own actions as
well as engage in a procedure of continuous learning. For nursing professionals, this practice is
considered to be one of the most necessary activities that help in fulfilling the requirements of
periodic re-evaluations (Schon, 2017). It can be considered as the procedure of studying from
one’s own experiences for the improvement the way by which a particular professional works in
his domain of healthcare. This is important for registered nurses who want to carry on their
learning throughout their lives. The act of reflection is considered as one of the great ways for
increasing confidence in the professionals and thereby helps the professionals in becoming a
more proactive and qualified professional. Self-reflection helps in strengthening emotional
intelligence that helps them to gain an in-depth idea two important components like self-
awareness and self-regulation (Husebo, O’Regan&Nestel, 2015). It gives the ability to the
individuals to gain an understanding about emotions, strengths, drives, weaknesses as well as
values and goals. It also helps individuals to act with integrity by which individuals can become
clear on their core values that help in strengthening their integrity leading to better decisions. It
also helps nursing individuals to identify the lack of clinical skill and knowledge that they have
and provides them scope to learn from their mistakes. Reflective practice helps registered nurses
to be more confident as a professional and engage in better care for patients.
Compassion is one of the most important skills for curing people. Being empathetic
towards their pain and showing genuine feelings about their health enables positive outcome on
the health of the patient (Freeling & Parker, 2015). Moreover, communication, ethics and critical

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thinking are some of the most important skills required by nurses. Researchers are also of the
opinion that attention to detail and being confident are significant skills for every nurse (Jacob et
al., 2017). Adaptability, stamina and commitment to development also help every nursing
professional to provide the best care to the patients. Problems solving skills, decision-making
skills and teamwork attributes are also important for every nursing professional to posses so that
they can provide care to patients that are not only of high quality and of safe but also satisfied the
patient and provide them better quality life.
I aspire to go further in my career and want to see myself in the position of a leader with
the capability to guide a new set of professionals towards success and care for humanity. I have
compassion towards my patient and is able to provide empathy to my patients when caring for
them, this help me to develop an effective emotional attachment with them that results in positive
outcomes on patients. I can communicate efficiently with my patients both verbally and non-
verbally. I have cultural competence and thereby can provide care to them that aligns with their
cultural preferences and inhibitions. I am not only culturally sensitive but also unbiased towards
any cultures. With the help of different models, I have developed good critical thinking skills
like that of the clinical reasoning cycle. These models taught in theoretical classes enable me to
apply my critical thinking skills, decision making skills, problems solving skills and as well a
clinical knowledge to develop best interventions for the patients (Tanaka et al., 2015). However,
I am still working on my time management skills and multi-tasking skills, as that will help me to
care for more number of patients effectively and ensure better care for all.
Goal Specific Measurable Attainable Relevant timeframe
Development
of time
Reading on
internet blogs
Will self assess
myself by
Internet access
is cheap is the
Present day
internet blogs are
3 to 6

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NURSING PROFESSION
management
skills
about time
management
ideas, discussing
the issues with
mentors, reading
articles available
on net
setting
objectives on
tasks, ask for
feedback from
mentors and
colleagues,
maintaining
diary of missed
or achieved
deadlines
modern world
and is easily
available
through smart
phones, tablets
and
computers. So
getting
resources from
the net would
be easier.
Moreover, we
have
discussion
sessions every
week in the
college and
this would
help in getting
touch with the
mentors there.
written by expert
professionals
from different
filed and this
experiences and
guidance would
help me to
manage time
effectively
(Arrowsmith et
al., 2016)
months
Development
of teamwork
skills
Attend
workshops to
develop team-
working skills.
Also access the
The workshop
mentor would
provide marks
to me according
to my
Workshop is
on weekends
and so I can
easily attend.
Moreover
Mentor of
workshops will
help me prepare
my team working
skills and
3 to 6
months

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NURSING PROFESSION
internet and
digital library to
get evidence
based articles
where
recommendation
s for
development of
team working
skills are written
developments
in class and
also in the role
play sessions,
moreover
feedbacks from
my team
members would
also help me
know how well
I am fairing in
my team-
working skills
digital library
access is free
and therefore
is attainable
recommendation
s are provided by
eminent
researchers on
development of
this skill in
evidence base
papers that
would be fruitful.
References:

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Arrowsmith, V., Lau‐Walker, M., Norman, I., & Maben, J. (2016). Nurses' perceptions and
experiences of work role transitions: A mixed methods systematic review of the
literature. Journal of advanced nursing, 72(8), 1735-
1750.https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.12912
Freeling, M., & Parker, S. (2015). Exploring experienced nurses' attitudes, views and
expectations of new graduate nurses: A critical review. Nurse education today, 35(2),
e42-e49.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2014.11.011
Husebø, S. E., O'Regan, S., &Nestel, D. (2015). Reflective practice and its role in
simulation. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 11(8), 368-
375.https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ecns.2015.04.005
Jacob, E., Duffield, C., & Jacob, D. (2017). A protocol for the development of a critical thinking
assessment tool for nurses using a Delphi technique. Journal of advanced nursing, 73(8),
1982-1988.
https://doi.org/10.1111/jan.13306
Schön, D. A. (2017). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Routledge.
Retrieved from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781351883160
Tanaka, S., Harrois, A., Nicolaï, C., Flores, M., Hamada, S., Vicaut, E., &Duranteau, J. (2015).
Qualitative real-time analysis by nurses of sublingual microcirculation in intensive care
unit: the MICRONURSE study. Critical Care, 19(1), 388.
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13054-015-1106-3