Growth and Developement 

Summary

This past clinical experience on B2 has allowed me to grow in my skills as a nurse and refine my personal values of care. My clinical skills have seen key improvement around wound dressing, head to toe assessments, and medication administration. My personal values in how I care for my patients and the importance of collaboration with staff have also been refined. Two identified areas for improvement include time-management and documentation. For wound dressing, I felt nervous about attempting this skill. I did not remember how to properly set up my sterile field and forgot many items. I felt my ability to actually dress the wound, however, was conducted with competency. Thankfully, I was able to learn from these mistakes and improve during my next opportunity. For my head to toe assessments, I felt confident and strong in this skill and was able to complete a successful head to toe evaluation. Near the end of the clinical, I developed my own order of conducting the assessments, within proper technique (ex. auscultation before palpation of abdomen). Medication administration was also a key area of development, considering the lab technology varies greatly from the PRHC equipment. By my last opportunity, I felt more comfortable with the MAR and how PRHC documents medication. I was able to retrieve the proper items and complete all my checks for administration. Moving to my personal nursing values, I had numerous opportunities to reflect on my practice and the type of nurse I want to be some day. This guided me to determine that I want to remain compassionate in my work, understanding, precise, and hard-working. This clinical placement gave me the opportunity to practice in these ways, and the feedback I received from my patients strengthened this desire. I understand that a patient will not always have a good experience under my care, due to a variety of reasons. Despite this, I hope that the care I provide will be a result of duty, skill, compassion, and understanding. As for collaboration, working with the B2 staff was an amazing opportunity to see how nurses can work together and support each other in practical ways. I hope in the same way, I can continue to be kind to those around me in hopes that we can effectively collaborate for the good of our patients and staff. For areas of improvement, I must improve my time management to complete tasks within the timeline they are expected to be completed. I found this was a struggle as I often underestimated how much time a task could take. Not only that, it has been difficult learning to do a good job within a timely manner. In the future, I can focus on being more realistic in how long tasks usually take by reminding myself before I start a task. Improvement of my skills through practice will also help to complete them faster, while preserving precision. Documentation was one of my key learning goals for the start of the clinical. I feel I improved in understanding what was essential for daily and hourly charting, however I still continued to make some mistakes. Charting will require more practice, feedback, and knowledge around medical terms which my next clinical placement will help with. Overall, I feel this clinical placement has developed my abilities in many ways, specifically  with wound dressing, head to toe assessments, and medication administration. My key values in my practice have been further refined and the importance of collaboration has been highlighted. Some areas of improvement for the future include my time management and accuracy of documentation. I appreciate my clinical instructor and the staff on B2 for their patience, guidance, and inclusivity, as they have truly made this experience impactful  in many positive ways.