A nursing specialty that sparks my interest is neonatal nursing. Another nursing specialty, that is similar to neonatal nursing, I am interested in is maternity. Both specialties have always piqued my interest in that I find the ability of female bodies to create life is amazing and fascinating. I would love to continue learning about those specialties more in-depth.
I believe that learning about evidence-based practice is very important, especially when working in a healthcare setting. I assume that this course will be helpful in teaching us how to find good resources, how to apply evidence-based practice and other things like that. This course will also help me in my other courses with knowing different approaches to situations involving research or quality improvement.
For my experiential learning, I attended 5 events to complete my 8 hours. The first event I attended was an orientation for the Milestone Recovery Clinic on September 20th from 5:30-6:30. The second event I attended was the Preble Street soup kitchen on November 4th from 10am-1pm. The next event was on November 5th from 12pm-1:30pm about Prejudiced Patients: Caring for Those Who Discriminate Against You. I then attended Restraints and Seclusion in Maine Schools: We Can Do Better on November 10 from 6-7:30pm. The last event I attended was Change Agents: Fostering Health Equity and Social Justice on November 17 from 6-7:30.
Each one of these events had a priority focus. The orientation for the Milestone Recovery Clinics priority focus was an introduction to what the clinic was about. The people from Milestone clinic talked about how they help many people with substance use disorders who are homeless and don’t have the money for healthcare. The Preble Street soup kitchen was a fun three hours spent chopping up vegetables and packing up food for different shelters. The priority focus of volunteering at Prebble Street is helping those who cannot afford food. The CECE event about Prejudiced Patients was a very interesting conversation about a topic that I often fail to think about. The priority focus of this event was how to deal with patients who are prejudiced towards you or your coworkers. For Restraints and Seclusions in Maine Schools, the priority focus was to highlight the number of restraints used in Maine schools, and better ways to interact with children. The event for Change Agents’ priority focus was considering your responsibility to be an agent of change in the promotion of social justice.
The event that talked about Prejudiced Patients had two clear social determinants of health. These two determinants were racism and language and literacy skills. Unfortunately, there are many people who are still racist and make fun of those who are not fluent in English. If I was to see a patient being prejudiced towards one of my coworkers, I would first assess the situation for safety and a possible reason the patient is acting that way. If the patient were stable, I would then speak up and defend my coworker and after, inform my supervisor.
During these events, I saw examples of where interprofessional collaboration could help facilitate better outcomes for patients. For the Preble Street soup kitchen, they could collaborate with dieticians to provide to most filling and nutritious foods for those they hand the food out to. The Prejudiced Patients event talked a little bit about having policies in hospitals on what to do if a patient is prejudiced towards you or a coworker. The hospitals can collaborate with ethics teams to create these policies and put them in place. The Restraints in Maine Schools event talked about how schools could use different ways to discipline students and the current stats on restraints being used. The schools could collaborate with social workers to help train teachers and staff to better interact with students. The Change Agents event could collaborate with legal teams to fight for more equitable policies and to make a change in the world.
Nurses have a lot of contact with patients and the family of patients. Being kind and following the nursing code of ethics, nurses often make a difference in patients’ lives. I felt that I made a difference in my patient’s life while I was in clinical this past semester. This patient did not have any family or friends that would visit them in the hospital, leaving them feeling lonely with no one to talk to.
Upon my arrival to my patient’s room, I could tell they had a sad look on their face. At first, I was nervous that the patient was not going to be in the mood to have a student nurse in their room. But after I introduced myself and explained why I was there, they let me do a bedside assessment on them. As I tried to make conversation with them, I felt that they started to open up to me more. My patient was happy to talk about stories of when they were young and all about their family. We told a lot of jokes to each other and shared many laughs throughout my time there.
As I was saying my goodbye to my patient at the end of my shift, my patient held my hand and spoke to me with a few tears in their eyes. They explained that no one ever visits them at this facility or any facility they’ve ever stayed at. My patient explained they couldn’t remember the last time they laughed as hard as they did that day and how much they enjoyed my company. I left my clinical that day feeling very good about making my patient happy. The feeling from that experience is one that I will chase after for the rest of my nursing career.
The patient enjoys having drinks on the weekends with his friends. This can be a big safety concern with taking cyclobenzaprine. This combination can cause CNS depression. Another safety concern is the opioid prescription. Making sure the proper education on opioids for safe administration and avoiding addiction and misuse is essential.
Were they related to the age of your patient or your patient’s ability to understand their medications?
Those safety concerns were not related to the age of the patient or their ability to understand their medications.
Did the patient know why they were on each medication? Why would that be important?
The patient was able to tell me what all the medications they were taking did for them. This is important because the patient will better understand the importance of their medication and be more likely to stick to the medications.
Were there two medications that did a similar thing? Did the patient know why they were on both or was it an oversight?
The oxycodone and naproxen both were prescribed to the patient for pain. They were able to make the distinction that the naproxen was for mild pain and the oxycodone was for severe pain.
Were there any serious medication interactions that the patient had not been aware of?
The patient was not aware of the interaction between oxycodone and cyclobenzaprine.
Modules 3 and 4 were about knowledge and clinical judgment and priority settings framework. In the knowledge and clinical judgment module, I got to learn about different learning styles like auditory, visual, and tactile. This gave me some perspective into what could be a good learning style for me. this module also talked about clinical decision making and clinical critical thinking which could help me with the clinical I have this semester. For the priority settings framework module, I got to learn about prioritizing patients on a clinical level. This module gave me good insight to prioritize patients based on survival potential, the ABCs, and Maslow’s hierarchy of needs.
I picked this picture because I thought it was a good representation of collaboration. In this picture, the group is all held together with rope keeping them from falling to the ground when they lean back. If someone was to cut a section of the rope, one or more people will fall to the ground. This picture can be applied to any teamwork or collaboration group because if one person doesn’t put in the effort, or is unwilling to work with the team, then the whole team will fall apart.
One wellness goal that I have is to exercise regularly for an hour at least three times a week. another wellness goal I have is to set realistic goals for myself and to be able to reach out for help when I need it.
In the first and second modules from the ATI, I learned most about the best way to take an exam and the nursing concepts that every nurse uses. Learning the best way to take an exam relates to my exams for my classes this semester. Taking a nursing exam is much different than taking an exam for any other subject, so it will be helpful to develop good study habits to be as successful as I can. Learning the most important nursing concepts is essential for nursing school and for being a nurse. Learning these concepts will help me in my clinical rotations to apply them to real-life situations.
My second paper had some ups and downs In the writing process and in the finished product. For my writing process, I like to make an outline and plan what each paragraph is going to be about. To me, having that plan makes it easier to write more effectively and have a good flow to my writing. In the first draft of this paper, there were no Barclays or naysayer paragraph. This unfortunately was the same for my final draft. The easiest thing to edit in my paper was expanding on the ideas I already had and coming up with new ones. The subject of this paper was interesting to me and therefore made it easy to want to expand. The feedback I gained from my peers helped me come up with new ideas for my paper and helped me see things from another perspective. Editing other peoples papers also gave me ideas and helped me come up with new arguments. Doing peer editing was the best thing for improving my paper.
Learning Outcome 2:
The evidence in my paper was carefully picked out to help get across each point I was making. One specific example in my paper is when I used a quote to show that scientists working on gene editing still tried to follow a set of ethics. “He adds that, “he has permission from a local review board to do his research, but that this does not allow transfer of gene-edited eggs into the womb and subsequent pregnancy” (Cryanoski).” This quote was chosen because of how it related to the main idea of the paragraph.
At the start of the semester, I was hesitant about using so many quotes in a paper because I didn’t have enough experience with it. I thought that finding the right quote was hard and didn’t help my writing. After this semester, I am much more confident in my ability to find good evidence for my papers. I now also see how quotes support a paper and how it can help you expand on your ideas. I now prefer to use quotes in all my papers, not just for English, to make a stronger paper with lots of evidence to support any claim I make.
Learning Outcome 3:
When I come to a reading, I do not usually do any prior planning, I just jump headfirst into it. I like to highlight lots of things when I am reading something important. Anything that stands out or seems interesting to me gets highlighted. I do not usually write things in the margins of the paragraph because I find myself not knowing what to write most of the time. But if there is a word, I’m not familiar with I always look it up and write what it means in the margin. I also highlight anything that I think could be used for a future quote in my writing.
The two papers you gave us, Categories for Active, Critical response and 7 Active Reading Strategies for Students, gave some good techniques for active and critical reading. One of the things on the handouts said to keep track of the things you do and do not understand. This is a good way for me to better understand difficult readings. Lots of times I must end up reading a section of a difficult reading repeatedly to be able to understand it. This was advice I also obtained from one of your handouts. These tools of annotation can help me in many other subjects rather than just English. It will help me better actively read for all my classes and help me pick out the important information I need. Learning how to better annotate has a great benefit for the rest of a person college career ad even beyond that.
Learning Outcome 4:
Peer review is something that was very helpful throughout the semester. At the beginning of the semester I was a little bit hesitant on giving a peer review because I did not want to hurt people’s feelings. But now I know that peer reviewing is just meant to help better everyone’s writing. Global revision was a little but new for me because in high school my teachers were more concerned about the local revision. At first, coming up with global revisions seems a bit difficult but by the second paper, I was able to easily pick things out that could be edited. The class designed Peer Review Glossary was a big help in being able to find things to edit and to word them in a constructive way. My efforts in peer reviewing got stronger throughout the semester. Seeing how my classmates peer reviewed my own papers also helped me better understand the most effective way to peer review.
Learning Outcomes 5 and 6:
My ability to cite sources on my paper grew stronger throughout the semester. Usually on the first draft I am not too concerned with getting my citations correct as I am with the quality of the paper overall. In the first drafts of my papers I often miss I citation completely of I mark that I need put one in a certain place later. In my final paper, I always make sure to carefully look over all my citations to make sure they are all present and done correctly. For my local revisions I used the spellcheck that automatically comes with word and I also used Grammarly. Grammarly is a really good tool to use for local edits and helped catch things in my paper that I would not have myself. The handouts from Professor Spain about how to correctly cite things in text and for the work cited page was also a very big help.
