It also affords us the opportunity of changing our way of thinking or practicing, for when we reflect on an incident we can learn valuable lessons from what did and did not work. In this way we develop self-awareness and skills in critical thinking and problem solving (Carelock, 2001). The central aim of the following discussion is to explore and analyse an incident that occurred while attending clinical placement in a maternity clinic in London. To begin, the incident will be briefly described and the people involved introduced. Pseudonyms, in line with the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s (NMC) (2008) Code of Professional Conduct, are used to maintain confidentiality and protect the identities of all parties involved.
It is essential that patients know you care and want to help them. This is shown by making good use of the time spent with them, your tone, speed and volume of voice and listening carefully. Patients may divulge more information to nurses they trust due to the rapport that has been built, therefore it is vital to attempt to create as much of a close professional relationship as possible despite any barriers that may be in place. This essay will analyse part of the BBC TV programme “Someone To Watch Over Me” (2004) and how Jo, a social worker promotes health through communicating with Adam and Kim, the parents of Kim’s fourth child after her first three have previously been taken into care. 1a.
Abstract An error in time to administer medication to patients is a problem that should be familiar and face the nurse in her daily work. The issues that lead to medication errors have been extensively studied by different authors who publish extensive different outcomes but still many medication errors continue to occur and are not intercepted in the institutions. The nurse will remain the primary professional responsible for errors that occur and for this reason it is important to analyze aspects that allow easy approach to the work of the nurse in the detail frequent in his work that allows no errors occur in the administration of drugs. Medication administration is a complex multistep process. Usually a medication is a substance used in the prevention of health alteration of the people who need to take this one.
In doing so, the author will try to analyse the aspects that empower the midwife as well as how clinical autonomy is enabled in each setting. The report has been written specifically for those midwives who believe that it is more advantageous to work at a MLU rather than CLU as it allows them to practice more autonomously. It aims to demonstrate that it is possible to challenge the boundaries of midwifery regardless of the clinical setting. For this to happen a change in attitudes among the midwives who work in a CLU is required, thus hoping to increase awareness of what is possible in a hospital culture and what is actually already happening BACKGROUND The “Changing Childbirth Report” launched by the Department of Health (1993) emphasised the importance of woman-centre care. One of the points discussed was the choice of women regarding where they gave birth.
If a doctor or nurse requires a chaperone, in the first instance, another clinical member of staff is asked for. If they are unavailable, then a member of reception is asked to chaperone. A chaperone should always be offered where necessary and in every instance it should be logged on the patients’ record if a chaperone was present, who it was, or that a chaperone was offered and declined. In an ideal world, a chaperone would be available any time a health care professional was required to carry out an examination, but this would not be cost effective as another member of staff would have to be hired to be on stand-by all day every day in case they were needed to chaperone, and very often a chaperone is declined by the patient which would waste these expensive resources. Since working through the PRP course and reading in the PRP Handbook Part One about chaperoning, I have spoken to my Practice Manager about how I can actively help to make staff aware of what being a chaperone requires and how I can make patients realise that a chaperone is available to them.
These are not mutually exclusive, but can and should be used together when appropriate. These are not mutually exclusive, but can and should be used together when appropriate. To convince a person in authority of her plan, the nurse uses the three types of persuasive argument, ethos, pathos and logos, delineated by Aristotle in the fourth century BCE, and still considered valid today. (Cline, 2002) Ethos is an appeal to authority. Explaining how the nurse's plan dovetails with the latest memo from the CEO about quality improvement, and the latest guidance paper from the IOM about error prevention, is an example of this sort of argument.
It’s important to observe mental status changes and functional status changes, this can determine how well the patient can take care of themselves and deal with their health promotion on their own. Altered cognition is not a normal part of aging and the nurse may need to pay close attention to the possibilities of the onset of dementia. Activities of daily living include everything we do during our normal day to properly take care of ourselves and as we get older these tasks may become more difficult. Nurses need to assess how well a patient can see or hear, vision and hearing loss can be quite debilitating to performing ADL’s and it’s the nurses job to make sure our patient is in a safe environment and that they have proper vision/hearing care with proper strength prescriptions for their glasses or hearing assessments. It is very important to remember that hearing and vision loss is normal with aging and that when we perform our assessments we should talk slowly and annunciate clearly so the patient can understand any direction or education that is given (GCU, 2012).
(Blais & Hayes p. 91). When playing the part of patient advocate and helping family members to decide what is best for a patient that is unable to make their own competent decisions we refer to provision 1.4 the right to self determination of the American Nurses Association Code of Nursing Ethics. “In situations in which the patient lacks the capacity to make a decision, a designated surrogate decision-maker should be consulted. Support of autonomy in the broadest sense also includes recognition that people of some cultures place less weight on individualism and choose to defer to family or community values in decision-making. Respect not just for the specific decision but also for the patient’s method of decision-making is consistent with the principle of autonomy.
The Department of Health’s Essence of Care (2010) Benchmarks for communication states “All staff must demonstrate effective interpersonal skills”. Bach and Grant (2011) suggest effective interpersonal skills include active listening, good attending and empathy, which in turn aid therapeutic communication. McCabe and Timmins (2006) proposed therapeutic communication with patients begins with active listening and states that “active listening requires not only the act of hearing but also an active interpretation of what is heard”. Initially in this interaction the staff nurse does not actively listen to the
Research is the systematic investigation into and study of materials and sources in order to establish facts and reach new conclusions (Oxford Dictionary 2011). The ultimate goal of research is to develop, refine and expand upon a body of knowledge providing evidence to either support or reject clinical practice (Polit and Beck 2004). Evidence based practice is broadly defined as the use of the best clinical evidence in making client care decisions (Polit and Beck 2004), and is agreed to ensure safe practice (Sackett 1996). By giving care based on evidence, a nurse acts as an advocate, working to their Code (NMC 2008a), helping clients to access relevant health and social care. In this essay the author looks at the role of the nurse in managing the safe withdrawal of clients detoxifying from alcohol on an inpatient unit.