Reflective Paper on Transition to Nursing: NRSG 138, Semester 1, 2019

This reflective paper details a nursing student's learning experience in the NRSG 138 Transition to Nursing unit, focusing on the development of their understanding of the nursing profession. The student explores key concepts such as Roach's 6 Cs of nursing, the Roper-Logan-Tierney model, Levett-Jones clinical reasoning, and patient-centered care within the Australian context. The paper reflects on the student's initial expectations, feelings, and evaluations of the learning process, identifying challenges in grasping certain concepts and analyzing the factors contributing to these difficulties. The paper also explores the impact of political forces on nursing practices, specifically in rural and remote areas. Finally, the student outlines an action plan to enhance patient outcomes through improved communication, patient involvement in decision-making, and the application of learned principles. The paper references relevant literature, including research on ethical considerations, clinical reasoning, and nursing practice standards.

Transition to Nursing
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation

Description
This learning experience has increased my knowledge base on nursing as a profession. I
have learned about decision making, ethical considerations, critical thinking as well as the
political forces that affect nursing in Australia. Some of the specific topics taught to me are
Roach’s 6 Cs of nursing, Roper-Logan-Tierney model, Levett-Jones Clinical Reasoning, person-
centered care as well as the code of ethics and conduct acceptable in Australia. Roach’s 6Cs
advocate for excellence and provision of quality healthcare to the patients. These are Care,
Compassion, Competence, Courage, Communication, and Commitment. Compassion entails
caring with dignity, respect, and empathy while ensuring effective communication and doing the
right thing for the people he or she is caring for including speaking up when concerned and
embracing innovations (courage). The nurse should have the ability to understand the health
needs of the patient and have the technical and clinical knowledge required to meet them in a
committed care process (Baillie, 2017).
Based on the activities of daily living (ADLs), the Roper-Logan-Tierney of nursing is a
theoretical model that is practice-centered and is useful in both clinical and academic settings
(Williams, 2017). ADLs refer to people’s day-to-day self-care activities. The abovementioned
model helps in promoting maximum autonomy to the person by proving interventions in areas
that are impossible or too difficult for the individual to manage on their own. Clinical reasoning,
on the other hand, describes the process by which nurses and other clinicians collect data,
process it, and interpret it to understand the patient’s condition, implement helpful interventions,
evaluate health outcomes and reflect on the process to learn from it (Levett-Jones et al., 2010).
Terms such as clinical judgment, decision making, problem-solving and critical thinking have
been used interchangeably. This is a self-reflection paper based on Gibb’s reflective cycle and

describes my feelings and thoughts on the learning process of the above-mentioned topics, noting
my initial expectations on the same. It also evaluates the learning experience identifying the
difficulties I experienced in grasping some concepts and analyzing the reasons why. The paper is
finalized by stating an action plan I intend to take to improve health outcomes for the patients.
Feelings
Although I believed that commitment was required in my profession, I did not pay much
attention to delivering quality care with compassion and in a holistic manner. This learning
experience helped me understand the importance of involving the patients and their families in
decision making for better health outcomes (Delaney, 2018). I learned that patient-centered care
meant putting their desires, values, lifestyles, social circumstances and family situations into
consideration when making clinical decisions. Also, it made me come to terms with the fact that
making a clinical decision is a lengthy process that requires the acquisition of data from formal
education, experience, and other useful sources. In other words, I recognized that becoming a
nurse was only the first step of life-long learning (Cashin et al., 2017).
Before the experience, I did not fully comprehend the challenges that patients in rural and
remote areas of the country faced. The Jim case made me cognizant of the difficulty of accessing
healthcare services for people living in rural regions. As a result, I studied further on rural and
remote nursing in Australia where I found that the nurses also experienced certain problems such
as huge workloads due to the shortage of healthcare professionals in these regions. Additionally,
these nurses are required to undertake functions outside of their specialization due to lack of
specialists such as allied healthcare professionals. Furthermore, the experience helped me realize
the impact of the political continuum on nursing. I did not fully apprehend the fact that the
policies made by a country can alter the entire nursing practice (Forrester & Griffiths, 2014).

Evaluation
The part of this learning experience that worked best for me was studying the 6 Cs of
nursing and clinical reasoning as they were easy to grasp. The 6Cs were interesting principles to
learn about and ones that don’t seem too hard to adhere to in practice. In fact, I am looking
forward to applying Roach’s 6 Cs as a registered nurse in practice in the future. Similarly, the
concepts presented by Levett Jones clinical reasoning are easy to understand as they put forward
a cycle that entails the requirements that should be met in clinical decision making. These
include data collection, processing, and interpretation that enables healthcare professionals to
understand the problem of the patient and act accordingly (Bulman & Schutz, 2014). However, I
feel like learning about these concepts and applying them in practice are two different things.
The clinician’s decision has impacts on aspects such as diagnostic certainty, patient risk and
costs incurred by the healthcare organization (Hezaveh, Rafii & Seyedfatemi, 2014). Factors
such as these have a probability of making me anxious about the health outcome of the patient
since I want the best for him or her and for the hospital as well. Also, collecting data may prove
to be time-consuming and even after obtaining the required information, there is a likelihood of
developing uncertainties about the very best course of action (Yang, Thompson & Bland, 2012).
On the other hand, grasping the numerous codes of ethics for nursing was a bit
challenging even with the knowledge of medical ethics such as non-maleficence, beneficence,
justice, and autonomy (Zahedi et al., 2013). Understanding the Roper-Logan-Tierney of nursing
theoretical model was confusing as I did not comprehend at first how it helped with the daily
living.

Analysis
Before the learning experience, I mostly viewed myself only as a nursing student and not
quite as an individual who was about to become a full-fledged nurse. I also did not think that it is
possible for a nurse to offer inferior care and that is why I did not pay much attention to the
quality of care. I did not fully comprehend the concept of patience-centered care and involving
the client in decision making as I thought that he or she was supposed to follow the medication
directives given regardless of their feelings. As the learning progressed, I grasped more and more
concepts about the subject which increased my confidence in contributing to class discussions.
This has been one of the most effective learning experiences which have helped me learn how to
think like a nurse, unlike most of the earlier experiences I went through.
Conclusion
During this learning experience, I could have interacted more with patients to enhance
my clinical decision making and try to make it as less time-consuming as possible. In the future,
the plan of action I intend to take involves creating a strong relationship with my patients,
ensuring effective communication and involving them in the decision-making process to enhance
their hospital experience and improve their health outcomes.

References
Baillie, L. (2017). An exploration of the 6Cs as a set of values for nursing practice. British
Journal of Nursing, 26(10), 558-563.
Bulman, C., & Schutz, S. (Eds.). (2013). Reflective practice in nursing. John Wiley & Sons.
Cashin, A., Heartfield, M., Bryce, J., Devey, L., Buckley, T., Cox, D., ... & Fisher, M. (2017).
Standards for practice for registered nurses in Australia. Collegian, 24(3), 255-266.
Delaney, L. J. (2018). Patient-centered care as an approach to improving health care in
Australia. Collegian, 25(1), 119-123.
Forrester, K., & Griffiths, D. (2014). Essentials of Law for Health Professionals. Elsevier Health
Sciences
Hezaveh, M. S., Rafii, F., & Seyedfatemi, N. (2014). Novice nurses' experiences of
unpreparedness at the beginning of the work. Global journal of health science, 6(1), 215.
Levett-Jones, T., Sundin, D., Bagnall, M., Hague, K., Schumann, W., Taylor, C., & Wink, J.
(2010). Learning to think like a nurse. HNE, 15.
Williams, B. C. (2017). The Roper-Logan-Tierney model of nursing. Nursing2018 Critical
Care, 12(1), 17-20.
Yang, H., Thompson, C., & Bland, M. (2012). The effect of clinical experience, judgment task
difficulty and time pressure on nurses’ confidence calibration in a high fidelity clinical
simulation. BMC medical informatics and decision making, 12(1), 113.
Zahedi, F., Sanjari, M., Aala, M., Peymani, M., Aramesh, K., Parsapour, A., ... & Dastgerdi, M.
V. (2013). The code of ethics for nurses. Iranian journal of public health, 42(Supple1), 1.