Reflections In Clinical Practice Samples - MyAssignmenthelp.com

Question: Discuss about the Reflections In Clinical Practice. Answer: Nurses have to learn from their previous experiences to gain skills that are required for a thoughtful practice. I will reflect upon an incident I had experienced using the Gibbs reflective cycle in this essay. This reflection will help me to evaluate the actions, observations and thoughts that underpin the decisions related to healthcare. During my placement in the surgical ward, I came across Mr. Smith in the post-operative ward following surgical intervention for intestinal obstruction. The senior nurse-in-charge briefed me and two other nurse trainees about the case. He was screaming for the need of pain killers to reduce abdominal pain. I administered an oral dose of 1000mg acetaminophen (Tylenol) for every 4 hours. Acetaminophen blocks prostaglandin synthesis, thereby lowering inflammation and pain in the body (Blieden, Paramore, Shah, Ben-Joseph, 2014). His pain seemed to reduce for few hours. However, he suddenly started complaining of swelling in upper abdomen, followed by mild bleeding from the surgical site. During handover, a second nurse trainee did not go through his medical charts. She administered a single subcutaneous injection of 2,000 USP units/2 mL heparin sodium to stop bleeding. This aggravated his symptoms he had abdominal cramps (Anders Trautmann, 2013). Finally, a third nurse used an intramuscular 10 mg dose of metoclopramide. She repeated the process after 4 hours. His abdominal cramps and bleeding from the surgical site reduced (Kraft, et al., 2014). I felt that a strong analgesic was needed to be administered to Mr. Smith. Hence, I administered an oral dose of acetaminophen (Bullock Manias, 2013). However, the dosage exceeded the required limits and led to the side effects. Pain is often a subjective experience and may have psychological aspects associated (Macintyre Schug, 2014). The poor medication shown by one of the nurse while injecting heparin injection helped me realize that close scrutiny of medical records is essential before any treatment. The good practice shown by the nurse who gave an intramuscular dose of metoclopramide helped me realize that accurate documentation of drug activities is imperative to minimize any medical errors in a patient. It was essential to monitor his medical history accurately before he was given any pain killers upon complaining of abdominal pain (Coleman, et al., 2012). This would have helped to evaluate the side effects that can occur and aggravate his symptoms. His vital signs like fluid and electrolyte balance, dehydration and nausea should also have been looked out for before giving the oral medicine. My action plan will include be significantly different if such a situation arose again. I will look at the patients documents and will try to increase the efficacy of pain management techniques. I will also use pain assessment tools like verbal description scale sot evaluate the severity of pain caused (Hill, Hall, Glew, 2017). Thus, it can be concluded that the reflection helped me explore and gain more awareness on medication errors. The event helped me gather evidences that I will be able to utilize further while working in the post-operative setting. This will help me increase my patient-nurse relationship and deal with such acute cases. Bibliography Anders, D., Trautmann, A. (2013). Allergic anaphylaxis due to subcutaneously injected heparin. Allergy, Asthma Clinical Immunology, 9(1), 1. Blieden, M., Paramore, L. C., Shah, D., Ben-Joseph, R. (2014). A perspective on the epidemiology of acetaminophen exposure and toxicity in the United States. Expert review of clinical pharmacology, 7(3), 341-348. Bullock, S. . (2013). Fundamentals of pharmacology. Pearson Higher Education AU. Bullock, S., Manias, E. (2013). Fundamentals of pharmacology. Pearson Higher Education AU. Coleman, K. J., Ngor, E., Reynolds, K., Quinn, V. P., Koebnick, C., Young, D. R., Sallis, R. E. (2012). Initial validation of an exercise vital sign in electronic medical record . Med Sci Sports Exerc, 44(11), 2071-2076. Hill, R., Hall, H., Glew, P. J. (2017). Fundamentals of Nursing and Midwifery: A Person-Centred Approach to Care. Kraft, W. K., Chang, P. S., van Iersel, M. L., Waskin, H., Krishna, G., Kersemaekers, W. M. (2014). Posaconazole tablet pharmacokinetics: lack of effect of concomitant medications altering gastric pH and gastric motility in healthy subject. Antimicrobial agents and chemotherapy, 58(7), 4020-4025. Macintyre, P. E., Schug, S. A. (2014). Acute pain management: a practical guide. . CRC Press.