Achieving Patient Safety With Critical Thinking in Nursing - Essay Sample

Introduction

Aligned with my nursing objective of the second clinical day, which was to do head to toe assessment of a patient, my learning objective was taking adequate care of my patient with the application of critical thinking to guarantee patient safety. I feel that adequate care for patients through critical thinking is essential both in nursing life and my daily life. Before the clinical day, I viewed patient care only as a clinical process for nursing diagnosis and treatment; however, I found that it requires communication with the patient to ensure health care safety. During my second clinical day, I interacted with a Patient Care Technician (PCT) during her morning shift by assisting her to do vital signs and check blood glucose for patients. Throughout the learning experience, I learned some of the obligatory skills on how to manage workload during a busy shift along with the process on how to take care of patients, bath them, and do a head to toe assessment.

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I was assigned to a 76-year-old patient admitted to the hospital two days ago with a chief complaint in alter mental status to take care of her. According to her lab details, she has clostridium difficile (also known as C. diff), so she was put in an isolation room. Whenever people go in and out of her room, everyone should wash hands with soap and water, wear a gown and gloves. She has a lot of pain in her upper legs, can barely move her legs, and she is lying on her bed with the foley catheter inserted into her genital. I applied my nursing knowledge to take care of her and did vital signs and head to toe assessment. With the help of the PCT, I bathed my patient with chlorhexidine gluconate (CHG). Also, I got the opportunity to observe the nurse take care of her foley catheter and put the external urine on the patient. I assisted her in doing teeth hygiene, fed the patient during her lunch, bathed her, and changed the bed linen.

From my experience of the second clinical day, I now feel confident about my capabilities as a nurse and understand the role of patient care much better. This was my first time doing vital signs, head to toe assessment, and bath a real patient. I am pleased about what I observed, learned, and did. The experience is a noteworthy learning progression for me since I now understand more about the difficulty of nursing and PCT and the importance of patient safety when it comes to patient care.

As my learning objective for that day involved taking proper care for my patients and acquiring more critical thinking, I can confidently say that I met my personal learning objective. In the process of the head to toe assessment, critical thinking is fundamental since the procedure involves accessing the patient's neurological function, musculoskeletal function, the integumentary system, and the GU function. My best experience that day was getting to help the PCT bath the patient with chlorhexidine gluconate, doing the head to toe assessment, and feeding her. This is because they require a high level of care and engagement with the patient. What interested me during the clinical experience was how much the simplest actions of care towards a patient can impact the treatment process. Whether care is meant for health promotion, diagnosis and treatment, rehabilitation, or disease prevention, adequate care is fundamental.

Conclusion

Overall, I am confident that my actions of quality care towards my patient during the clinical experience positively impacted my mastery of patient care and improved the patient's recovery. With a view on my therapeutic communication style, which involved active listening, reflecting, and offering of self, it is indispensable to maintain proper interaction with a patient and understand everything he or she might be feeling. This is something I intend to apply to meet my objective during the next clinical experience.