Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper

Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper

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The Week’s Clinical Experience

The week’s clinical experience has been very enriching. As I continue with my practicum experience, I find myself becoming more and more competent. Each day I become accustomed to doing clinical physical examination to women from antenatal clinic to those women that have reproductive system illnesses. In particular, I have extensively examined pregnant mothers this week and performed a series of pelvic examinations for women that have come with lower abdominal pain as well as vaginal discharge. My practicum center is in an upmarket location and the clients and patients that I have been seeing the whole week are mostly middle class and upper middle class in the society. This is to say that they do not have a problem with healthcare coverage. The implication of this is that I have been able to do any test or investigation that I want as there is no cost limitation most of the time. The chemistry between me and my preceptor has also been great this week. I have been receiving very helpful advice and directions from her and the only thing I can say is that she is a transformational leader (Islam et al., 2018). I am looking forward to having a very fruitful practicum experience with her as my mentor. Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper

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One Patient Experience in Primary Care 

This past week, I dealt with the case of a 33-year-old woman who had frothy, stinky, and green vaginal discharge. Trichomonas vaginosis was my initial diagnosis. I carefully gathered both subjective and objective data in order to make this diagnosis (Ball et al., 2019). My judgments on testing and treatment were greatly influenced by my understanding of Trichomonas vaginalis, the microbe that causes trichomoniasis, and the fact that it is a parasitic protozoan. Additionally, I found that knowing what is communicated during sex helped me greatly with partner therapy and health education.

I was aware that oral, anal, and vaginal sex forms the methods of transmission. I was also aware of the fact that it is one of the leading sources of STIs (Hammer & McPhee, 2018). As part of my cognitive learning, I had discovered that T. vaginalis does not form cysts and reproduces through binary fission. I had to be aware of the drugs I should utilize as a result. I remembered right away that the antibiotic metronidazole is the most effective treatment for this (Rosenthal & Burchum, 2018)Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper. A single, high dose of the antibiotic is typically the most effective dosing, and it is exactly what I did.

A female who has trichomoniasis will have the disease’s recognizable colorful and pungent vaginal discharge. Males typically don’t show any symptoms, despite the fact that they can spread the virus. Because of this, a woman being treated for the disease is frequently asked to bring her spouse along. Therefore, even if the male partner is symptom-free, they are typically treated. I asked this lady to bring her partner and I got so fulfilled when he agreed to come.

Two Significant Aspects of the Learning

Being in practicum experience or attachment means that as a student nurse I am still learning, especially clinical competencies and the application of cognitive domain knowledge to affective and psychomotor domains. This means that one will be impacted in one way or another. For me, this was as follows:

1. During the week in question, I became aware that it is not as easy as one usually thinks to apply knowledge learnt in class to practice. This is because there is rarely any textbook presentation of conditions as taught in class. A majority of the conditions will present with just some of the symptoms learnt and so one may mistakenly think it is not that particular condition. I found myself face to face with this fact this week.
2. The affective domain is one of the most challenging to master. As a nurse student who is still to qualify and enter full time practice as a nurse practitioner, I found myself with mixed feelings at times. For instance, when a patient clearly did not like me to attend to them because I am a student, I found myself sometimes feeling offended and wanting to be defensive. Through the guidance of my preceptor, I have however come to appreciate that this is not how things are done Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper.

Thoughts and Feelings

Feelings of inadequacy have been unavoidable for me the whole week. This has happened to me every time I got a diagnosis wrong or got the required tests and investigations wrong. It is through my preceptor that I have found myself regaining back my confidence in these situations. The other thought was my apprehension that a patient may find that I am not sure of what I am doing and cast doubt on my abilities. But these were unfounded fears as through my preceptor I discovered that there is no student that does not get some of the things wrong while on practicum attachment.

Evaluation

One Personal Strength and Weakness

A personal strength that I have is that I am a people person with people skills. This means that I am able to most of the time put the patient at ease with my charm and oratory finesse. I must admit that this has enabled me countless times to compensate for my inadequacies elsewhere. For the same reason, I am able to work very well with my fellow students on practicum as with the employed qualified staff that are already practicing at the facility.

A personal weakness that I must confess I have is the inability to forget failure and just learn from it. I keep on replaying scenarios in which I have felt that I failed. This has the effect eating up my confidence and making me prone to make other mistakes out of fear of repletion. However, this is something that I am working on together with my most able preceptor. I believe I will achieve resolution because of the empowerment and motivation that I am receiving.

Analysis

The advantages of this clinical experience have been immediately more evident now that I have completed one clinical rotation. This is very encouraging because I feel like I spent a lot of my first rotation worrying about what my function as a student was meant to be and what I should be doing. I am very fortunate to have a preceptor right now who is passionate about teaching. I have continued to learn new things from other people by consulting my consultative learning approach, which I have always employed. This has been a great approach to tap into the knowledge of the facility’s qualified workers Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper.

It was certainly challenging to strike a work-life balance because the organization was at full capacity when my clinical stint began, so I was assigned to work a few extra times in the department. This caused a certain amount of anxiety and stress that made it more difficult to retain some knowledge and study, and it also nearly caused me to experience burnout for the first time. I am aware that I still need to acquire what I must acquire, but it is not particularly simple.

Conclusion/ Learning

I learned from this past week that I need to schedule time for learning and reviewing material in between each clinical day. Setting aside a list of things to review and look up later is incredibly simple. When I arrive at the clinic having read up on and evaluated information on a specific issue beforehand, my therapeutic encounters are deeper. It enables my preceptor to go into greater detail and then highlight the things that are most crucial for women and my upcoming job as a primary health care provider.

Action Plan

This is to offer a strategy for development and/or to promote learning throughout my practicum. I have two things I want to do better or apply to help me learn for scenarios in the future: I will first apply what I have learnt to my next clinical. I’ll keep going over the topics my preceptor has given me to review. Second, in an effort to focus my experience on my educational inadequacies, I will try to choose themes in advance. After that, I’ll keep engaging in consultative learning to increase my knowledge about pregnant women and women in general. Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper

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References

Ball, J., Dains, J.E., Flynn, J.A., Solomon, B.S., & Stewart, R.W. (2019). Seidel’s guide to physical examination: An interprofessional approach, 9^th ed. Elsevier.

Hammer, D.G., & McPhee, S.J. (Eds). (2018). Pathophysiology of disease: An introduction to clinical medicine, 8^th ed. McGraw-Hill Education.

Islam, T., Tariq, J., & Usman, B. (2018). Transformational leadership and four-dimensional commitment: Mediating role of job characteristics and moderating role of participative and directive leadership styles. Journal of Management Development. https://doi.org/10.1108/JMD-06-2017-0197

Rosenthal, L.D., & Burchum, J.R. (2018). Lehne’s pharmacotherapeutics for advanced practice providers. Elsevier. Practicum Reflective Journal Assignment Paper

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