Personal Reflection: My Experience As A Clinical Nurse

This nursing program has been an extremely difficult and adventurous journey; however, I realized that every nursing program has to be difficult because we are caring for the lives of people. Nursing is a rigorous field, but a rewarding one. I believe this program his given me the experience and knowledge I need to be able to care for a variety of patients. Throughout this program, I felt the first and third semesters were one of the most difficult ones because of the clinical simulations we had to complete. Truthfully, going through the clinical scenarios is far more difficult than actual patient care simply because we are being closely monitored by our instructors. On the other hand, I do believe it is better to make mistakes in clinical simulation than out in the field with an actual patient. During the clinical simulation, I feel the area that challenged me the most during this past semester was having complete and total trust in my partner. This is something that constantly challenges me as a health care professional; I believe I have a problem with delegating tasks. In my first semester, I stated in my reflection that I had trouble asking for help from the other students. I remember getting overwhelmed with vitals and helping assisting patients with activities of daily living. This behavior has gotten better in this semester of nursing. While at my clinical rotations at Del Sol ER, the students and I worked together to accomplish multiple tasks needed among the various patients. When a patient was brought to the ER, we immediately got urine, changed the patient and received all vitals. If there was blood to be drawn one of us would set up the equipment and the other would start the IV and vice versa. On the other hand, in the simulation I did not have confidence in my partner and felt worried that something would go wrong. I need to have more confidence with individuals I have never worked with before in order to reduce my stress on the field. One behavior I felt that I was careful with in the first semester was communicating with the standardized patient. Since I work in the nursing home, the relationship I had with my patients was very different than the relationship with my standardized patient. I like to use humor and non-verbal gestures with the residents of the nursing home but that is not something I would be able to use with the standardized patient. Since it was a very short interaction, I was not able to …show more content…
I definitely owe this to my previous work experience. I was able to interact with any patient no matter the circumstance. I also asked the nurses on the unit if they needed help with anything or if they had skills my classmates and I were able to accomplish. Some of my classmates were really nervous to ask if the nurses needed any help; I still remember being the same way when I first started working in the healthcare field. I believe this behavior is vital to the healthcare field because we will soon have to communicate with patients or healthcare workers that may not like us for some reason. In addition, this behavior is vital when communicating with an MD that may be difficult to work with. Self-doubt can really put stress on an individual and it may prolong certain life-saving interventions depending on the situation you are