Professional Progress Summary

Practice Summary Paper

NURS 403 Transition to BSN Practice

Purpose of Assignment

The purpose of this paper is to guide you through a process of self-reflection and self-evaluation to discover the scope of your personal and professional development while enrolled in the RN-BSN nursing program at Old Dominion University.

Student Approach to Assignment

I approached this assignment with a sense of self-reflection and a time to self-evaluate myself and to see where I stood as someone who is close to entering the profession of nursing. I intended to show my progression in many of the outcomes from when I first entered nursing school and compare it to the present. I wanted to use examples from my practice and relate them to showing the achievement of required program outcomes.

Reason for Inclusion of this Assignment in the Portfolio

With an intensive nursing program, I feel it is best to take the time to reflect on objectives achieved throughout the course of the program. This is a time where I am busier than I ever thought possible and had it not been for this paper, I feel that I would not have taken the time to reflect on my time in RN-BSN program and see how far I have come as a nursing student and how my future practice has been shaped.

Critical Thinking

Evaluates nursing care outcomes through the acquisition of data and the questioning of inconsistencies.

I identified alarm fatigue among nurses on a local ICU floor and determined the gap between what the policy is expected to be and what was happening on the floor. This required me to spend a few days on the floor and assess how many alarms were being attended to promptly versus how many went unanswered. Hospital policy is that every alarm be answered in a timely manner and it was found that more than half of the alarms went unnoticed until it got bad enough a complex nursing intervention. I brought this problem to the attention of the floor and from there created and carried out a teaching plan.

Nursing Practice

Performs direct and indirect therapeutic interventions that incorporate principles of quality management and proper safety techniques based upon assessment findings.

When a patient came in with a subarachnoid hemorrhage and I found that my most effective intervention as a nursing student, in that situation, was the use of therapeutic communication with the family. While the patient was being taken care of medically, the family needed the extra time I took to provide them with comfort and knowledge that their loved one was receiving quality care.

Communication

Adapts communication methods to patients with special needs

From the beginning of my time as a nursing student when communication was simply trying to adhere to appropriate verbal and non-verbal cues to the end of my time where I was faced with determining how to overcome communication barriers. I mentioned taking care of a patient after the insertion of a new tracheostomy tube, which interrupted a normal communication pattern. In this case I had to find other ways to communicate with the patient through the use of headshakes and nods, pen and paper, and family members.

Teaching

Evaluates the efficacy of health promotion and education modalities for use in a variety of settings with diverse populations.

While teaching happens in almost every class in the RN-BSN program, NURS 402 required us to create a teaching plan and evaluate the effectiveness of the teaching. After evaluating my objectives and their level of completion, I found that each objective was successfully met and the nurses were receptive to the ideas discussed to combat alarm fatigue.

Research

Evaluates research that focuses on the efficacy and effectiveness of nursing interventions

I completed my Role Transition Preceptorship in the Emergency Department where many of the patients were added to research studies. This spiked my interest in research and seeing if the interventions we were using the Emergency Department were effective. I found research showed that appropriate, timely interventions, such as EKG's and immediate transfer to the cardiac cath, lab increased their chances of survival and quality of life.

Leadership

Delegates and supervises the nursing care given by others while retaining the accountability for the quality of care given to the patient

Each fellow student in my class had a chance to shadow another student during their Role Transition Preceptorship. This led me to appropriately delegate tasks to the student such as IV starts and EKGs, while also assuring the task was completed accurately and safely.

Professionalism

Differentiates between general, institutional, and specialty-specific standards of practice to guide nursing care

The Emergency Department I completed my Role Transition Preceptorship at required that when a patient has a complaint of chest pain that an EKG be completed within ten minutes. There was an instance when there was not one completed in that time frame and my preceptor helped me establish what the proper facility policy is and address that issue. As a future nurse, it is imperative that I know facility policies and follow them in order to provide quality care.

Culture

Demonstrates sensitivity to personal and cultural definitions of health, and how these beliefs influence an individual's reactions to the illness experience and end of life

During a clinical rotation in the MICU, I took care of a patient nearing the end of his life, but the family insisted all measures be taken and that he be kept a full code should that issue arise. I had a hard time understanding why the family would want their loved one to continue suffering, but thinking back on what I have learned about healthcare and different people's beliefs, I determined It was my responsibility to remain non-judgmental and continue to provide quality nursing care.