Introduction
The program has contributed a lot to my professional and personal enrichment. The entire professional and personal enrichment part comes through a unique opportunity with this program. It offers a look from the inside into the details of the nursing profession and all the variety of its performance, along with the healthcare setup as a whole.
All these affected courses combined and taken during a year would really provide priceless instruction and skills: a combination of leadership and management, practice-based evidence, and interprofessional collaboration in my new approach to taking care of patients. It evokes critical questioning of one’s assumptions and unique solutions to complex problems. It added an aspect of purpose unto me, an element of lifelong learning that, in my view, any aspiring nurse should have – someone who can achieve a lot in their line of work.
First of all, I would like to thoroughly discuss a few courses that have marked a critical point in my nursing students’ careers. I would further say how these courses have served to build a solid core base of knowledge for an upgrade in one’s clinical skills, ultimately making one a good leader within the healthcare environment. Quite powerful, these reflections will serve a very great purpose in drawing the transformational power of education and the huge capacity of the Nursing Profession to contribute to good in the lives of single people and communities.
SIM405-23A (Professional Values)
“SIM405 was indeed the course to completion, the one that helped in the extrapolation of the roles of the nursing leader and the congruence of teamwork within the environment of healthcare. The course syllabus was to be structured in a manner such that it was to help the students learn in detail about the principles of leadership and how these principles are enshrined within professional nursing practice. “Create a lifelong learning and professional development culture around content-driven principles, set by a sense of growth and self-reflection, all set by the theory content and handy simulation drills, SIM405.
Some of the fascinating things I loved about SIM405 were the exposure to different simulation types, which tested how leadership could really be applied in reality through healthcare scenarios. Others include effective communication, delegation of responsibilities, pressure in the controlled space on making decisions, leading groups, and solving highly complicated situations. Those experiences provided me with confidence in the leadership of groups and solving complex situations, which are invaluable in my professional career.
One of the most trying simulations materialized into play and testing of leadership and conflict resolution. The scenario was critical and called for a collaborative team exercise, which led to the team coming up with an all-inclusive plan for patient care. However, as the simulation proceeded, the communication broke down, opinions among the team members were opposed, and tensions shot at one another, with the team breaking down. Likewise, by my realization and the way I was met with eyes rolling, the realization and reinforcement that it was up to me to look straight into it and take the team to a positive conclusion.
I applied the conflict resolution techniques that I had gotten from SIM405 to help the team make up its mind. The first technique I used was active listening, giving all the members of the team maximum time to air their views regarding the subject matter or any other concern they might have had on this issue. It is through giving my full attention to people and showing that I am actually interested in their respective ideas that the possibility of open and respectful discussions is available.
Secondly, use assertive communication, which clearly articulates your views and opinions and acknowledges and validates the standpoints of other people with due respect. This will open up and create an honest, correctly transparent dialogue where each team member’s voice is voiced out and valued. This paper expresses how they try to find the middle ground among the members. I will emphasize commonalities, demonstrate how those commonalities—or areas of agreement—come into play, and expound on the benefits of so doing: guiding or nudging the team for an outcome where both sides could rally.
As such, Leadership in Professional Practice has been an experience that one can easily term as ground-breaking in my development pertaining to leadership. The first lesson is that some leaders are calm under pressure. Great leaders have the ability to remain successful in situations of conflict or tension since they are great at remaining calm and objective, modalities that uphold stability and productivity toward solving a given problem.
In terms of leaders who collect diverse opinions from team members, one can easily understand how the value of those diverse opinions collectively fosters a multifaceted and inclusive team culture. Finally, effective communication is something that I can easily understand and grasp in a much better way right now: the power that it holds for leadership. The above are some of the critical techniques leaders use to achieve efficient and effective dialogue, which will lead to stronger relations and common goals: active listening, assertive communication, and finding common ground.
There have been some really practical applications that came out of this experience—applied in particular in this role-play, but also from SIM405 in general—in shaping my leadership development. From the experience, I was able to gain assurance and skills in effective team leadership and nurturing a collaborative environment, even in instances of disputes in life. As a progressed nurse in my career, I have come to realize that the principles acquired in leadership have been evident in my practice and have really assisted me to be a successful leader in nursing. Information and experiences learned during the process of studying SIM405 have been great supplementary contributors to my professional practice and personal development as a reflexive practitioner and leader throughout my life.
SIM415-21A (Management and Leadership)
In brief, the SIM415 course has provided effective lessons on the styles of leadership to practice, strategies for resolving conflicts, and different dynamics within the teams operating in this healthcare setting. This is because the course syllabus has been designed to challenge all the students in critical leadership thinking and to teach them how to adapt to different dynamics resulting from the team variations using stimulating case studies and group projects.
One of the most impactful experiences in this course for me was the one where I analyzed a difficult patient case in front of my peers and faculty. The patient had so many co-morbidities, which made it hard to manage, and he was also poor, therefore making the monetary issues trickier. I was left with the duty of leading the team, defusing the opinions of the team associates, balancing various priorities, and making sure each member contributed and produced their informed view in establishing the patient’s care plan and monitoring its progress.
This experience tested my leadership skills in many ways. The manner in which this process could be characterized would be to act with the help of active listening to understand where everybody was coming from in terms of their thought processes and actions. It needed me to set aside my preconceptions and biases and approach the situation as open-mindedly as possible. The second definite step was to empathize and appreciate the peculiar challenges and stressors each member of the team was going through, not with the case at hand but in their day-to-day lives. Finally, I had to establish common ground with the members and come up with a care plan that everyone would give their full support to and be successfully implemented.
I would say this gave me general insight into great leadership skills, where I got to understand that leadership is not the shoving down of an individual’s perspectives or opinions down the throats of other persons but a culture deeply rooted in promoting open communications, respect to various views, and setting the pace towards a common goal to be achieved by the team (Williams et al., 2009). After that, I realized that effective leadership demands a very high level of adaptability, where different situations require different types of sensitivities to manage team dynamics meaningfully. This experience confirmed that emotional intelligence is paramount in leadership. It induces trust, enabling collaboration to bring out the best in people in society.
SIM422-21A (Evidence-Based Practice)
SIM422 has been a crucial course in my RN-BSN program, and it reformed my thoughts and outlook as a student regarding what state research and evidence-based practice could take in influencing the clinical decision-making process. When I first commenced, I barely knew anything about critically appraising research papers and attention directed at applying these findings to real-life clinical scenarios. This course and the assignments associated with it helped me develop my skills and knowledge for integrating and using evidence in practice.
It was one of the most satisfying and memorable experiences ever in history. To be in the development of an elaborate comprehensive plan of pain all-inclusive with the EBP principles for a chronic pain patient, though with the abuse history of opioids, was the patient not on the use of pain medications, giving another great challenge to manage her chronic pain appropriately.
Regarding the identified specific challenge, I reviewed the literature in depth to find what non-pharmacologic, evidence-based practice interventions can be applied and adapted within patient education and in the care plan for pain management. From the literature reviewed, some of the effective interventions for chronic pain include, but are not limited to, cognitive-behavior treatment, mindfulness-based stress reduction, or physical therapy.
Such evidence, together with a patient history of presentation and concerted efforts with the patient, brings out much information with individualized plans for the management of pain comprising all these non-pharmacologic interventions combined with carefully used pharmacologic treatments. It also involved me in educating the patient to understand his condition, the reasons why he is having symptoms, and how to cope with the psycho-emotional aspects of chronic pain.
As a result, it came with highly affirmative outcomes that the improvement in the level of pain, ability to function, and the overall quality of life was highly improved. The experience has not only added to my beliefs in EBP but also taught me how the best quality evidence is linked with clinical and patient preference expertise, which stitches towards better and individual care.
This, in fact, gives birth to a passionate heart for lifelong learning and advocacy in the direction of EBP. I have learned that, as nurses, we have this background and continuous commitment to being open and understanding to determine what research and methods are most current and effective for the best possible care for our patients. iii. I came to realize that there is a need to share this knowledge and advocate for my colleagues. This indicates that I can now use the knowledge in real practice to support the integration of EBP processes into my place of work for better results and patient experience.
SIM436-21A (Interprofessional Collaboration)
SIM436 was an exemplary course that actually opened my mind to take the position surrounding the importance of interprofessional working. In this regard, I engaged many students and employees in the fields of medicine, pharmacy, and social work, among others. Such experiences have pushed me out of my normal life layout and forced me into crisscross relationships with other people from different backgrounds to join hands in working on a holistic care plan that would ensure a patient is taken care of in the best way possible.
One of the most memorable interprofessional simulation exercises entailed working on a discharge plan for a patient with a number of chronic conditions who had very little social support and had financial problems. With a physician, pharmacist, and social worker, this can lead to a very well-integrated and collaborative multidisciplinary approach to support such patients during discharge from the hospital to the community.
The value of uniqueness for each perspective, knowledge, and competency that each person in the team of inter-professionals has further continued to be provided with this simulation. While the physician guided invaluable insights into timely medication management and potentials of drug interaction in his recommendations, the pharmacist shared. On the other hand, the social worker facilitated consideration of the patient’s psychosocial setting, subject to available community resources, and meant that he would keep him in a suitable living environment by himself.
As a student nurse, I managed to bridge the appraisal of these diverse views and worked on the preparation of a wholesome discharge plan taking care of the medical, social, and financial whores of the patient. It took effective communication, active listening, and being open to learning from and working jointly with the rest of the inter-professional colleagues. Collectively gathering our competencies, we developed a discharge plan that aims to provide not only the patient but also decrease readmission-related risk and result in improved outcomes (Rice et al., 2016).
In turn, the whole experience has proved of essence in bringing forth a few invaluable lessons borrowed from instances regarding interprofessional collaboration. First, collaboration really demands respect, openness, and transparent communication among members of a team. This would incline towards a compelling, careful hearing of views, seeking clarity, and providing constructive input, among others. Secondly, my perspective of collaboration expanded into realizing that it means something other than diluting your professional identity or expertise. Still, it means capturing impartially, reaping the strengths that each team member brings in for a common purpose. Last but not least, here, the observation was that a single patient may receive truly patient-centered care, justifying the purpose of interprofessional collaboration through a whole range of their own needs and desires.
SIM440-22A (Collaboration for Healthcare Improvement)
The course developed collaborative traits that propel initiatives for the improvement of quality in the health setup. The projects in the setup pushed me to identify areas that could need a focus on improvement and develop ways to build evidence-based solutions.
I was given an opportunity to head the quality improvement project of reducing catheter-associated urinary tract infections within my unit. Indwelling catheters are a very major health problem, causing increased morbidity and mortality to those affected, increased years spent in the hospital, and also a general rise in healthcare provision costs. With the collaborative work of many members of the multidisciplinary team, including my fellow nurses and physicians, together with infection control specialists, we could come up with a way of implementing a comprehensive CAUTI prevention bundle.
Charge Nurses should also ensure the intermittency of needed interventions, such as the correct insertion and proper care of the catheter, the need for its daily assessment on necessity, and intervention for timely removal once not needed. A phenomenal reduction of around 60% in CAUTI rates was identified with continuous education and monitoring of healthcare professionals.
This experience further honed my skills in problem-solving and reminded me that collegiality and the use of data are meant to be a part of improved health care. IBP has taught me that quality improvement is a process that is threaded down through the philosophy embraced by all stakeholders, be it frontline staff or leadership. Come together and draw from the aspects of collective knowledge and expertise we both have, which will lay a means to driving meaningful and sustainable improvements in patient care.
SIM499-21A (Reflection of Professional Development)
It gives a perspective that urges reflective introspection about practice in nursing that one gets from early entry into the RN-BSN program and beyond. The meditative exercises really did pose the way in which the myriad of courses has molded my nursing practice, values, and even professional identity.
Through such reflection, the program has given me deep knowledge and skills and instilled great power within me for the sake of commitment and the desire to be a lifelong learner. All courses co-incisively challenged one to the betterment of Critical Thinking; assumptions are questioned, and usually, new knowledge is sought from multiple unique perspectives. They have taught a humbling appreciation of the complex and varied purviews of the nursing profession, as well as an appreciation for the conceptualization of health and well-being from a nursing basis.
Moreover, the program highly propels my major career objectives and goals. I can visualize the kind of nurse that I ought to be and the impact that I should be positively managing on my patients, colleagues, and the general healthcare system in its entirety. The advanced practice profession, including the role of the NP, has a specific growth plan in place that entails identifying diverse, particular actions such as health promotion activities, attainment of specialty certifications, involvement in research, participation in quality improvement projects, and finally, finding leadership opportunities in the quest for your niche.
The RN-to-BSN program has, indeed, impacted my life in many different ways. The program has prepared me to be a more competent, compassionate, caring nurse, giving me the tools, knowledge, and self-confidence to become a lifelong learner and leader in the profession.
Conclusion
The reflections I have had, having gone through this journey, have made me believe that the BSN program at American Sentinel University is very much such a big help and an accomplishment, packed with awesome gratitude. With each course, the program gained inspiration for the next step in this personal and professional journey, giving the needed tools, knowledge, and inspiration to be an even more skilled, compassionate, and impactful nurse.
For instance, I can fully appreciate and better understand the great strides that bring about the transformation of the care of patients through classes such as SIM405, SIM415, SIM422, SIM436, SIM440, and SIM499. The instilled leadership skills bring out confidence in leading, teamwork with other professionals, and integration of evidence-based practice in decision-making and advocacy for active health quality improvement from the healthcare setting. These very principles have actually helped me build my clinical competency to a great extent, so much so that it has enabled me to make a mark not only in my life but in the lives of my patients and colleagues.
One way to look at it is that although the work is time-consuming and hard, it is all above board, as there is so much that can be picked from it—learning not only academically but on a more personal basis. Reflective exercises and introspective tasks have forced me to analyze my values, beliefs, and professional identity and have made me much clearer on the direction of my nursing career. It has also instilled deep meaning and learning for life, which really injected in me those key ingredients to excel in a dynamic profession.
I am actively applying the skills and knowledge I will gain in the RN-BSN program upon getting myself back into the nursing practice. The success was built on the ground by the program, and I think I am well-prepared as either a leader or a change agent in healthcare. In relation, I feel so blessed with such amazing back and help from faculty and fellow students in this process; I look forward again in anticipation to learning and growing as a nurse in the next years.
References
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Jansen, L., Schemmel, A., & Prather, L. (2020). Chronic pain management: Strategies for improving patient care and satisfaction. Journal of Nursing Education and Practice, 10(6), 1-8. https://doi.org/10.5430/jnep.v10n6p1
Matthias, M. S., Talib, T. L., Huffman, M. A., Douaihy, A. B., Daley, D. C., & Bair, M. J. (2020). Chronic pain and patient-provider communication: A qualitative study of primary care patients and their providers. Journal of Pain, 21(1-2), 70-80. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jpain.2019.05.013
Nielsen, A., Stragnell, S., & Jester, P. (2007). Guide for reflection using the clinical judgment model. Journal of Nursing Education, 46(11), 513-516. https://search-proquest-com.americansentinel.idm.oclc.org/docview/203963529?accountid=169658
Schroeder, D. L., Hoffman, L. A., Fioravanti, M., Medley, D. P., Zullo, T. G., & Tuite, P. K. (2019). Enhancing nurses’ pain assessment to improve patient satisfaction. Orthopedic Nursing, 38(2), 108-117. https://doi.org/10.1097/NOR.0000000000000521
Williams, G., Gerardi, M., Gill, S., Soucy, M., & Taliaferro, D. (2009). Reflective journaling: Innovative strategy for self-awareness for graduate nursing students. International Journal for Human Caring, 13(3), 36-43.
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