Reflective Practice - Practitioner Incident Essay

Reflective Practice - Practitioner Incident - Essay Example The first reason, according to Somerville and Keeling (2004), is that in their busy work, nurses come across various deep-seated human needs and anxieties; and as a result, such events put a lot of emotional pressure on the lives of the nurses. Secondly, according to Taylor (2006), nurses are change agents. In other words, they should have the ability to influence other people to make positive changes. In such a situation, reflective practice enables nurses to look into how their own personality and approach influenced the outcome and to make necessary changes accordingly (ibid.). One can find the theoretical basis of this reflective practice in the adult learning theory of Kolb (1984). Admittedly, Kolb’s learning model consists of four elements: concrete experience, reflective observation, abstract conceptualisation, and active experimentation. This model gave birth to Honey and Mumford’s model. This model proposes four stages. The first stage is having an experience. It is followed by reviewing the experience, concluding from the experience, and planning the next step (Peter Honey and Alan Mumford’s learning styles, n.d.). ... As a nurse, it is usual for me to consider my past experiences for critical reflection. The following incident and the related reflection made me realise that I should have more belief in my own abilities and decisions in order to become an effective professional. That was a normal duty day and it was nearly 1 AM when a middle-aged person came with chest pain. As it was common, I started helping the person to undress and at the same time, I started recording various observations. As I talked to him, I understood that he came because he had severe central chest pain that night, which extended from the chest to the neck and left arm. Also, I noticed that he used to feel the same chest pain on his walk to his workplace and that this pain used to subside at rest. Though he had ECGs and investigations in the past, they revealed nothing. Based on the observation, I performed one more ECG, but there was nothing and the pain had subsided. Though I could find nothing wrong, I gave particular attention to his various features and background. The person was a regular smoker, overweight, and most importantly, he had a very stressful work life. It was learnt from the chat that he was a judge. It was at that time that the intern on duty came. I communicated all my observations including the patient’s history and background to the intern. However, to my dismay, I noticed that the intern was in no mood to listen to what I said and that she was not planning to give any particular attention to the patient. So, I moved to the duty medical registrar and reported the matter. However, to my utter surprise, the registrar, too, decided that there was nothing significant in my observation as the ECG had revealed that