Reflective Learning On Teamwork, Cultural Competence And Time Management In Nursing

Reasons why they occurred

Discuss About The Mong Chinese Baccalaureate Nursing Students.

While reflecting in the journal, three important themes came up. The first important theme was teamwork. I had the opportunity to work in a multidisciplinary team yesterday while caring for a patient of stroke in the rehabilitation center. It was entirely a new experience for me. The second theme is culturally competent care. I got the opportunity to provide service to an aboriginal woman who had suffered a fall due to her suffering from osteoarthritis. I failed to provide him culturally competent care as I was not aware of their cultural aspects of verbal and non-verbal communication. The third key theme was the time management. I realized that I am failing miserably in managing time effectively and therefore either I am missing on to achieve quality when trying to serve more patients or failing to attend to more patients when proving quality care to one patient.

While working with the team in the rehabilitation ward, I noticed that there was power struggles not only among the experts like the speech therapists, physiotherapist and the occupational therapist but also among the junior and senior nurses. These were resulting in long waiting times of patients, medication error, wrong documentation, blame games and many others. Improper communication, absence of trust and effective relationship among members were mainly found by me to be the reasons. The next issue was cultural competence. I had to provide healthcare interventions to an aboriginal patient with osteoarthritis. However, I did not know that their culture do not like eye contacts. They also do not like direct questioning. Therefore, while providing care, I made mistakes of these kinds that made her upset. She left the place without taking care. In case of time management, I am failing miserably. I cannot handle work and education at the same time and therefore, both of the domains are getting affected. As I am not being able to manage time, it is affecting the quality of care as well as quality of the knowledge I am developing from education. Therefore, I am burning out.

From the reflective journal, I had gathered knowledge about the important attributes that are important for teamwork. I developed the knowledge that in order to provide better quality care to the patient, every members of the team should have effective communication with each other’s. They should have trust and boding among themselves so that they can pan together for the common goals and thereby work collaboratively towards each other (Kalisch et al. 2015). Power struggles have the capability to result in error prone services that may have threatening impact on patient resulting him or her to stay for long days in hospitals or readmissions. Therefore overcoming ego and negative feelings, one should provide constructive feedback and connect with each other mentally and emotionally to help patients develop better quality lives (Tofil et al. 2014). Culturally competent care is extremely important for making the patients feel that their dignity and autonomy is respected and that the professionals’ cultural traditions, inhibitions and preferences are given importance (Yi et al. 2016). This makes the patient feels that their culture is provided importance ensuring that they would be receiving culturally sensitive care. These have positive outcomes on the mental and emotional health of the patients (Judge 2017). Effective time management is extremely important for not only maintaining own schedules about management of profession and education effectively but at the same time it also enhances the efficiency for providing high quality and safe care (Bias et al. 2015). Effective time management ensures that I can attend to a large number of patients but also provide them quality service. This would help the organization to meet its goals easily and thereby can help more individuals to live with better quality life (Cherry and Jacob 2016).

Important learning from the journaling

I have realized that I need to develop skills that would help me to participate in effective team working. For this, I need to develop my communication skills by which I can engage in both formal and informal talk with others in the team and can thereby develop bonding with the members. For these, I will be joining workshop classes where the mentors would be helping me to learn about proper attributes in teamwork and thereby develop communication skills effectively (BSA et al. 2014). For culturally competent practices, I will go through different internet articles. They contain information about cultural traditions and preferences of ethnic classes and religions. This would help me to develop cultural awareness and hence provide culturally competent care. For effective time management, I should go through recommendations provided by evidence-based articles and maintain Smart objectives. These would help me to gradually develop the competency and become efficient in time management (Brown et al. 2017).

In order to work effectively with team members, every members should be aware of the skills that they need to posses so that they can dedicate themselves entirely without getting engaged in conflicts and power struggles. Therefore, I would advice them to undertake workshop classes and those who cannot attend them, I can hand my important theoretical resources of the workshop to them. This would help them to develop as proficient team members. I would also give them all the evidence-based articles that I have collected myself for cultural competence and time management. Such evidence-based studies would help them to develop as better professionals.

 The main form of my support would be motivation for my colleague. I would help them understand the concept of reflection. I would provide them with articles that state the benefits of reflection in healthcare. I would help them to know how reflection encourages lifelong learning. This form of motivation would make them interested and therefore they will take up reflective practices in their own domains as well. I will also provide some of my personal experiences where reflective learning had helped me to learn from my mistakes and develop my skills and knowledge. This would ensure them that they would be also benefitted from this type of learning.

I woke up late previous Friday and I checked that it was half an hour left for reaching my shift in the hospital. I immediately got a scolding from my mentor and was immediately asked to handle nine patients within a time of two hours. I was quite shocked, as I have never handled so many patients within such a short period. I grew very nervous as I always believed that I should be very careful while caring for patients and therefore I should take as much time I require for their diagnosis as I cannot afford to make mistakes regarding diagnosis is a hurry. Therefore, an immediate conflict took place between the values of time management that I believed and the demands that was placed on me by the nursing manager. I went to him and stated that I cannot perform this task. He stated that it was my mistake that I came late and stated that if I would have come by time; I would have got more hours to handle the nine patients. He also stated that there was short staffing on that day and therefore he cannot help me. I was quite demoralized and lost my confidence. However, my fellow nurse provided me confidence and asked me to set periods for the nine patients and start with the work. I was nearly successful although I required half an hour more than allocated. I realized that it was not so difficult and i should put importance to time management skills and develop them effectively.

The ways my reflection should be used

Initially I was very scared about taking up the task as I was not every confident about my time management skills. I have often failed miserably in several situations regarding time management and therefore such task evoked a sense of discomfort and uneasiness in me. I got concerned thinking of the fact that if I make any mistake while hurrying up in caring for the patients, I might get in legal obligations. On the other hand, if I did not do the task, the manager would be disappointed upon me. I was tensed and I felt like running away from the spot. However, motivation of my friend encouraged me and I took up the challenge and tried to be confident in my approach.

The bad part of the incident was that I had to undertake activities that I was neither comfortable nor confident at. I was fearful that I might make mistakes in the diagnosis and documentation if I had the pressure of meeting the expectation set by the manager. There was a huge chance of me getting involved in legal obligations and my career might have been affected if I could not provide the quality that was expected at the same time of meeting the quantity as well. The good part of the incident was that it exposed me to a situation that helped me to overcome my fear of time management; I had belief that I can never manage time efficiently. The exposure to such scenario and the success that I received helped me to overcome my fears and thereby helped me to be manage time efficiently. I developed the confidence and divided the period of two hours into nine sections thereby allocating proper time slots to each patient. Such a  planned movement and organization of the planning helped me to achieve my goal.

Effective time management is an important attribute for every professional. It helps individuals to complete proper work on the correct time thereby preventing losses and helping in achieving success and to meet the goals. In the nursing professionals, missing of deadlines may result in huge impact on the lives of patients (Liu et al. 2014). Often it is seen that there are many patients on the wards when the nurse patient ratio is less. It becomes the duty of the professional to attend the patients in ways by which the most vulnerable persons are attended first followed by priority (Wolf et al. 2015). This prioritization is also associated with time management as often patients cannot afford enough time in crucial situation and many rely in life threatening situation. being flexible, having quick presence of mind, deciding and segregating activities, planning the activities and setting goals for self are some of the effective tips for proper time management. It not only helps to meet deadlines but also enable the professionals to be burdened with work pressure as completion of work within timelines reduces piling up of works (Holloway and Galvin 2016). Moreover, time management at the time of crucial situation like mainly in the emergency wards have the capability to save people from threats and hence such attributes need to be developed (Urden et al. 2017).

Important points that need to be shared with colleagues

Conclusion:

What I would do differently should a similar event occur again:

In such a situation, I should never become tensed when my mangers give such challenging task. I should develop confidence on my time management skills. I should immediately apply by critical reasoning skills and presence of mind and thereby plan, prioritize set time limits for myself. Once I plan and be sure about the effectively of the plans I made for effective time management and completion of the allocated task, I should proceed with it confidently and thereby complete my task successfully.

The knowledge and skills I will require to enable me to think, feel and behave differently next time:

 I have understood the importance of time management in healthcare and ways by which important it is to save the lives of patients. Effective time management also helps individuals to complete their own work on time and thereby prevent themselves from being burdened by piling up of workloads. Ineffective time management also results in developing feelings of burning out when too much work piles up (Smith 2016). This may affect the zeal and enthusiasm of the nurses and may affect the other activities of the life of the professionals. Being late in one task, may result in procrastination of the other tasks. Therefore, i need to develop effective time management skills. I would follow the five important steps of prioritization, organization, delegation, utilizing teamwork, and taking effective breaks to manage my time and provide the best productivity.

Three strategies to achieve professional development goals:

I should follow evidence based articles where researchers have provided recommendations for healthcare professionals to manage time effectively. The second strategy would be to involve in a discussion session with a stalwart nursing professional to develop ideas about his experiences of time management and to receive his valuable suggestion for time manage. The third strategy would be to develop SMART objective to become efficient in time management over three months. Following this, I would reflect on the skills to develop more knowledge.

Impact that achievements may have on my colleagues, clients, the wider community/society and me:

I would become am expert professional if I can manage time efficiently.
as I would be completing work on time, my colleagues can delegate me their work if they have any personal or professional issues. I would complete them successfully as well. As I would be able to serve more people with more quality, the organization would be able to accommodate and serve more patients. Therefore, my organization would have profits and more patients would be able to lead better quality lives.

References:

Blais, K., Hayes, J.S., Kozier, B. and Erb, G.L., 2015. Professional nursing practice: Concepts and perspectives (p. 530). NJ: Prentice Hall.

Brown, D., Edwards, H., Seaton, L. and Buckley, T., 2017. Lewis's Medical-Surgical Nursing: Assessment and Management of Clinical Problems. Elsevier Health Sciences.

BsN, R.N., 2014. Time management in nursing work. International Journal of Caring Sciences, 7(3), p.746.

Cherry, B. and Jacob, S.R., 2016. Contemporary nursing: Issues, trends, & management. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Holloway, I. and Galvin, K., 2016. Qualitative research in nursing and healthcare. John Wiley & Sons.

Judge, K., 2017. Teamwork Can Change Everything. Journal of Infusion 

Kalisch, B.J., Aebersold, M., McLaughlin, M., Tschannen, D. and Lane, S., 2015. An intervention to improve nursing teamwork using virtual simulation. Western journal of nursing research, 37(2), pp.164-179.

Liu, J.Y., Liu, Y.H. and Yang, J.P., 2014. Impact of learning adaptability and time management disposition on study engagement among Chinese baccalaureate nursing students. Journal of Professional Nursing, 30(6), pp.502-510.

Ratanasiripong, P., Park, J.F., Ratanasiripong, N. and Kathalae, D., 2015. Stress and anxiety management in nursing students: biofeedback and mindfulness meditation. Journal of Nursing Education, 54(9), pp.520-524.

Smith, V.A., 2016. Nursing student attrition and implications for pre-admission advisement. Journal of Nursing Education, 29(5), pp.215-218.

Tofil, N.M., Morris, J.L., Peterson, D.T., Watts, P., Epps, C., Harrington, K.F., Leon, K., Pierce, C. and White, M.L., 2014. Interprofessional simulation training improves knowledge and teamwork in nursing and medical students during internal medicine clerkship. Journal of Hospital Medicine, 9(3), pp.189-192.

Urden, L.D., Stacy, K.M. and Lough, M.E., 2017. Critical Care Nursing-E-Book: Diagnosis and Management. Elsevier Health Sciences.

Wolf, L., Stidham, A.W. and Ross, R., 2015. Predictors of stress and coping strategies of US accelerated vs. generic baccalaureate nursing students: An embedded mixed methods study. Nurse Education Today, 35(1), pp.201-205.

Yi, Y.J., 2016. Effects of team?building on communication and teamwork among nursing students. International nursing review, 63(1), pp.33-40.