Reflective Learning Experience
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Reflective Learning Experience
I recently worked as a nurse’s aide, which was part of my course learning experience. This gave me the opportunity to learn more about taking care of patients. My experience was in a nursing home, where I dealt with the senior citizens. I was surprised at how much I could learn from the old people in the homes. They shared their life stories with me, and gave me a chance to have a different perception of life. As one of them told me, “you get to have a different perspective of life when you have nothing else to live for in this world.” Based on this opinion, she told me that she had learnt how to appreciate people more and that some of the things she considered significant when she was younger now seemed trivial to her. I could see through the way most of the people in the home behaved that they had the same perspective. One could expect them to be sad, but this was not the case with them. They were a happy group, and they loved spending time together. They shared the bittersweet memories of their youth, and some of those who had children talked about them freely. There was unmistakable joy in their faces when they received a visit from a beloved family member.
My work at the home involved taking the health records of the patients. I would visit the patients and listen to the health problems they had. I learnt that the patients seemed to have many health problems whenever the person attending to them showed any level of patience and willingness to listen to them. I would record all the information I received. Sometimes, the nurse gave me permission to check for the patients vital signs, which was sometimes challenging because of the inability of some of the patients to take care of themselves. The patients could not turn, and they needed someone to help them turn. On many occasions, I assisted the patients with their daily activities. Many people in the home were able to take care of themselves, and they were able to take care of simple hygiene. They had no problems in feeding, and some of them even went dancing in the nursing hall during the weekends. However, other people in the home were not able to do some basic things such as lift a spoon to their mouth without pouring the content. This was especially the case with the patients who had arthritis, and who were too old to move. I helped in feeding and cleaning them, an experience that changed my life.
Working as a nurse’s aide in the home made me view the nursing profession in a different way. I recognized that patients needed to be patient because they dealt with different people from diverse backgrounds. Some patients are stubborn, and they may try someone’s patience. It is easy for a nurse to get angry on the job, and this can be dangerous for both the nurse and the patient. I also realized that other than the professional skills taught in schools, nurses need to have additional skills such as interpersonal and communication skills. These skills ensure that the nurse is in a better position to handle the patients. It can be easy for nurses to misunderstand the patients if they do not have good communication skills. Being an effective nurse requires the person to have good listening skills, as this will enable him or her to know the patient’s need better.
It is crucial to have interpersonal skills because it helps a person to deal with patients and other people as well. Some physicians and family members can be hard to deal with, and this makes the nurses work more difficult. In the nursing home, some of the family members did not think that we were doing the job well enough. It was sometimes difficult to follow the physician’s instructions, because they gave orders without spending much time with patients and they disregarded what the nurse had to say. This was difficult considering that the nurse spent more time with the patients than the physician did. I enjoyed my time at the home, and I benefited much from it. I believe that it gave me a head start on some of the things to prepare for when I finally become a nurse.