NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

Students are required to maintain weekly reflective narratives throughout the course to combine into one course-long reflective journal that integrates leadership and inquiry into current practice as it applies to the Professional Capstone and Practicum course.

In your journal, you will reflect on the personal knowledge and skills gained throughout this course. The journal should address a variable combination of the following, depending on your specific practice immersion clinical experiences: NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

1. New practice approaches
2. Intraprofessional collaboration
3. Health care delivery and clinical systems
   

   NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

4. Ethical considerations in health care
5. Population health concerns
6. The role of technology in improving health care outcomes
7. Health policy
8. Leadership and economic models
9. Health disparities

Students will outline what they have discovered about their professional practice, personal strengths and weaknesses that surfaced, additional resources and abilities that could be introduced to a given situation to influence optimal outcomes, and finally, how the student met the competencies aligned to this course. argument.

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Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal

            Nursing practice is often characterized by various issues and complexities. The practical experiences and knowledge gained from the practicum practice have prepared me to overcome the intricacies of health care system and deliver effective services to the patients. The experience gained in attending to patients from various healthcare settings has given me opportunities to hone my leadership and professional skills. As a baccalaureate prepared nurse who intends to work in different settings, I have realized that I should not rely entirely on my proficiency in training but also enhance my ability to implement leadership skills and take part in the provision of efficient healthcare services to the vulnerable groups. Moreover, the practicum experience equipped with ability to master the perspective of the healthcare system where I look forward to providing my roles in line with the systemic formation of health care organization.

Week __1___: New practice approaches

            During my practicum experience, I realized that many health care organizations still utilize traditional care approaches, which lead to poor patient outcomes. However, the practicum activities of this week allowed me to acknowledge the importance of embracing new improved approaches in delivery of health care to enhance patient outcomes. Currently, the nursing practice continues to experience massive changes and so, nurses need to stay abreast with the changes to remain relevant in the field and ensure provision of high quality care. Some of the new approaches that nurses should consider include the adoption of evidence-based practice (EBP) in nursing. EBP is critical in ensuring that nurses uses care practices and strategies that are anchored on best available evidence to ensure quality and safety of care, cost reduction, and positive patient outcomes. Adoption of EBP equip nurses with understanding of use of research evidence, patient engagement in care process to achieve patient-centered care, and clinical expertise to provide quality health care (Fain, 2020). The other new approach that nurses can adopt is the integration of cultural and spiritual aspects in the patient’s treatment plan. Nurses should strive to provide holistic care to patients. Overall, in my future practice, I intend to rely on EBP to ensure improvement in patient outcomes, quality of care, and safety of patients. Moreover, I will also ensure delivery of holistic care to my patients.

Week ___2___: Intra-professional collaboration

The idea of interprofessional collaboration is increasingly becoming prominent in health care industry due to the interrelated nature of the health care system. The current health care system is complex, demanding, burdensome, and multifaceted for a single nurse to accomplish. One of the most interesting learning experiences I have noticed in this week’s practicum activities is that, in nursing care, a single issue may need input from different groups drawn from various areas of specialty. Essentially, the nursing role of leading change and enhancing health cannot be changed. As such, it is imperative for nurses to acknowledge that no single nurse can undertake these roles solely. In this week, the practicum activities allowed me to participate in interprofessional approach by providing opportunity to collaborate with other health care providers, which is essential in tapping into potential of all the team members to improve patient care (Ibraheem et al., 2020). Interprofessional collaboration is associated with many benefits such as quality health care, improving patient outcomes, and reduction of cost of health care.

In this week’s practicum activities, I understood the essence of taking every health care provider into consideration in collaborative engagement as an important element of enhancing health care delivery and patient outcomes (Vestergaard & Nørgaard, 2018).  Moreover, I have realized that interprofessional collaboration also spans above patient health care delivery to systems level. The current health care organizations require refined organizational systems that significantly rely on the integration and interrelationship of various systems and services that are provided by different departments and health care providers.

Week ___3___: Ethical considerations in health care

Health care system and health care provision mostly depend on clinical decision making and judgment. Often, nurses tend to struggle with ethical issues in their professional practice. As a result, ethical challenges tend to arise in situations which need in-depth moral questions of what is right or wrong in making decisions about the patient care (Petersen et al., 2018). However, following this week’s practicum activities, I have learned the essence of considering ethical culture and climate in the health care organizations where I operate. The greatest lesson I learned about ethical considerations in health care is the need to uphold high ethical standards in clinical practice. As a professional nurse, I have realized that when dealing with patients, I should be guided by key ethical principles such as autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice, especially when making clinical decisions. Moreover, when ethical issue occurs, it is imperative to adhere to a good ethical climate that forms employee perceptions on the manner in which fundamental decisions that contain ethical contents are handled, deliberated, and managed. Moreover, the practicum activities of this week enabled to understand that nurses have both personal and collective responsibility to create, sustain, and enhance the ethical environments both in the practical perspectives and employment that supports safe and quality standard health care. This responsibility is critical in ensuring that nurses maintain the worth of ethical environment that acknowledges the importance of realizing the values and preferences of the patients and their families (Petersen et al., 2018). Overall, this week’s practicum activities on ethical considerations in health care enabled me to understand the essence of ethical principles in addressing the ethical issues that are rampant in health care system and also helping nurses to engage with their patients in the kind of care they want.

Week: __4___: Practices of culturally sensitive care

The current US population is highly racially and ethnically diverse, thus, the need for culturally competent care. In most cases, racial and ethnic minorities tend to experience cultural and social barriers in access to quality care (Giger & Haddad, 2020). However, the practicum activity in this week equipped me with ability to appreciate the value of respecting the patient’s cultural background when providing care since the cultural differences between health care providers and the patient adversely impact the access and quality of health care provided. Often, there are numerous cultural hindrances to health accessibility, which are linked to many negative implications in nursing. For instance, provision of culturally insensitive care can potentially ruin the trust relationship between nurses and patients and also affect the chances for effective patient engagement, and communication. Nonetheless, the practicum experience was essentially in creating the awareness of essence of acknowledging the cultural distinctions in health care delivery and utilizes this inform my routine clinical practice by ensuring respect for the patient’s cultural background, values, and preferences when providing care (Giger & Haddad, 2020). I have realized that cultural sensitive care is crucial in establishing relationship of trust between the patient and the health care provider and also ensure an environment where every patient, irrespective of the cultural background can feel comfortable and adhere to the medical treatment plan and eventually improve patient satisfaction and outcomes.

Week___5___: Ensuring the integrity of human dignity in care of all patients

            The focus this week was on the integrity of human dignity of all patients. The activities included protection of integrity of human dignity of patients. This activity is associated with the my topic in the sense that newly hired nurses should be trained on the essence of ensuring protection of human dignity of all patients to help them to avoid issues of breach of confidentiality and privacy in their future practice. Healing environment needs privacy and confidentiality, which creates satisfactory feelings to the patients by ensuring that the care process is not disrupted. Also, ensuring patient privacy and confidentiality is critical in building a relationship of trust and enhancing communication between the patients and care providers, thus, helping patients to have peaceful mind, which is essential in healing process (Kaldjian, 2019). The important lesson I learnt this week is that respect for human dignity is a fundamental dimension of nursing practice and the responsibility of protection of patient dignity in the clinical practice is a prominent feature of ethical nursing practice.

Week___6___:  Health care delivery and clinical systems

The focus this week was on health care delivery and clinical systems. The activities conducted included health care requirements and issues regarding health consumers such as health facilities, healthcare policies, healthcare products, human resources, health services, regulators, and equipment. This practicum helped to recognize the inconsistencies in the clinical system, which requires reforms. One of the inconsistencies included nursing shortage, which is the focus on this project. Since health care system is highly fragmented as a result of various factors such as nursing shortage among others, there is need to optimize clinical systems and delivery system through sound collaboration, coordination, system planning, and communication, which can be achieved through preceptorship and residency programs to enhance critical thinking, communication, practical, and technical skills required in the current health care system among newly hired nurses. The important lesson I learnt this week is that sound health care delivery and clinical systems is essential for both patients and care providers. Patients benefits from timely, safe, reliable, and integrated care while providers enjoy more satisfaction and motivation.

 

Week ___7___: Population health concerns

 

This week’s topic was population health concerns. One of the main population health concerns addressed this week is access problems. The practicum revealed that it is challenging to provide optimal health care and reduce the impacts of illnesses in the populations without addressing the problem of access. The practicum revealed that some of the main challenges hampering access include people’s location in remote areas, traditional practices still opposing western medicine, and lack of technology to facilitate virtual care. Due to these challenges, some populations remain underserved as mortality and morbidity rates remain unnecessarily high in some areas. The level of education in some communities is also a limiting problem. Further, the week revealed that illness management is also a critical population health concern. Access to care and affordability intensifies this problem since the most affected communities are disadvantaged in these areas. Illnesses’ emergence and the lack of resources to counter emerging cases exacerbate the problem further. A suitable illustration is the differences in communities’ responses towards Covid-19 due to differences in resources and government’s priorities that was evident this week. Such situations put some population segments at considerable risk, particularly the elderly and those with chronic illnesses. The important lesson I learnt this week is that achieving the required care quality and cost balance is a genuine concern, and addressing it is a significant challenge to health care providers, financiers, and the government.

Week___8___:  The role of technology in improving health care outcomes

 

This week focused on the role technology is playing in enhancing health care outcomes. The activities performed included exploration of electronic health records (EHR), computerized physician order entry (CPOE), and telehealth. The focus on technology this week has helped to realize that the role of technology in health care has currently expended and become an integral part of health care provision. The adoption of technology has enabled health care industry a chance to improve and change health care different ways such as enhancing efficiencies, minimization of cost of care, minimization of human errors, and trailing data overtime. In addition, technology is playing a monumental role in enhancing communication between health care professionals, facilitating patient-centered care, enhancing medication safety, and expanding access to health information. Having focused on the technology and its impact on health care provision, I have realized that technology and in particular, nursing informatics and IT have unlimited potential in health care. Therefore, nurses should always find these opportunities and exploit them to enhance health care delivery. NRS 493 Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment

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