NURSING7019 Advanced Clinical Practice

Description

In the course of our nursing study, all the students were taken to a healthcare center for gaining practical knowledge on clinical practices. We were supposed to use our own knowledge and critical thinking capabilities regarding which medication to provide to the patient. I chose to give oral antibiotics to adults which was a great experience for me whereas one student properly gave medicine via intramuscular injection and another student poorly applied the subcutaneous injection .The positive part was they knew the five writes of medication and the negative part was they did not check any allergy propensity of subcutaneous injection.

Feeling

These learning experiences have made me feel that the act of administering a medication is just a little part of the professional job in the medication administration procedure. There are other critical roles such as situations needing assessment of dosage, selection of medications, timing, extensive care, understanding the psychology of the patient and many other aspects are interrelated (Papathanasiou, Tsaras & Sarafis, 2014). Apart from the oral administration of medications, the administration of intramuscular and subcutaneous injections requires the nurse to be aware of the patient’s medical history, preferences, allergies, adverse effects and others (Nasca, Weiss & Bagian, 2014). In a nutshell, if the oral process need extra care and deeper insight, the injection practice needs higher skills of administration.

Evaluation

The best part of the experience is that, through this practical application of our knowledge and study, we will be able to become better healthcare workers and smooth administrators of medications. After this we will be able to assess the moods of the patients and provide care according to that. The patient safety factors will be better understood and safety measures will also be learnt to use properly. It was a bit risky and we feared of causing harm to the patients because we were doing it for the first time practically. The administration of medication requires excessive concentration and the risk factors are extremely high (Middleton, Grimley & Alexandrov, 2015).

Description

Clinical learning is an essential part of nursing education. In clinical learning students are prepared for the future clinical work. It occurs best in critical practical environment rather than in the classroom (Häggman-Laitila, Mattila & Melender, 2016). The most important factor in clinical learning is the superiority of clinical education. Lack of appropriate tools to measure the environment has affected my clinical learning experience. A prolonged time with the patients and involvement in some other clinical tasks could have enriched my clinical experiences more.

Conclusion

It would be helpful if I could have engaged into the administration of medications via injections too. I had an interest of trying those skills too. Apart from providing oral medications to adults, I would love to visit the child section and spend some hours of my day observing their problems with care and provide proper medications to them.

Action Plan

In future, I am going to improve on my disease detection skills by studying more medical books and journals suggested by my instructor. I have understood that the detection of the disease is the most crucial work in the clinical practice. There is a high chance of applying wrong medication on the patient without accurately recognizing the health condition. I will engage myself in a practical medical learning process and expect to do away with the confusions that I faced in the last healthcare center I visited. I hope to acquire more knowledge within the next 3 -4 months on how to check the patient, how to detect the illness and how to give perfect dosage to medicines to the patients

Reference

Häggman-Laitila, A., Mattila, L. R., & Melender, H. L. (2016). Educational interventions on evidence-based nursing in clinical practice: a systematic review with qualitative analysis. Nurse education today, 43, 50-59. DOI: 10.1016/j.nedt.2016.04.023

Papathanasiou, I. V., Tsaras, K., & Sarafis, P. (2014). Views and perceptions of nursing students on their clinical learning environment: teaching and learning. Nurse education today, 34(1), 57-60.  https://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.nedt.2013.02.007Nasca, T. J., Weiss, K. B., & Bagian, J. P. (2014). Improving clinical learning environments for tomorrow’s physicians. New England Journal of Medicine, 370(11), 991-993.  Retrieved from – https:/pdfs.semanticscholar.org/9537/c62f290000a2990030fe8d7310d41d7f0583.pdf

Middleton, S., Grimley, R., & Alexandrov, A. W. (2015). Triage, treatment, and transfer: evidence-based clinical practice recommendations and models of nursing care for the first 72 hours of admission to hospital for acute stroke. Stroke, 46(2), e18-e25. DOI:10.1161/STROKEAHA.114.006139