Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal

Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal
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Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal
During my placement process, I worked within the surgical ward under the supervision of my mentor. I want to reflect on the skill and knowledge I learnt during my practicum that have helped my career pathway options. Working under my mentor, I was assigned several duties that provided me with additional skills needed as a health care worker. I learnt practical activities that could save patients. During my course practicum, I studied modules like patient transportation, infection control and mandatory reporting. In the second phase of practicum, focused on understanding common terminologies used in the health workplace.
I felt excited that I was finally learning the practical part of nursing after learning all the theories. I was eager to become a competent nurse and hoped that the skills I learned throughout the practicum period would help me in my future career. During the first weeks I felt I felt intimidated because I felt that my mentor had more experience and could easily point out at my mistakes, contrary to my expectations ,my mentor was very supportive. The many weeks of interacting with patients and other health care providers gave me the confidence to apply whatever I had been taught without fear of being intimidated by others.
I was motivated by the fact that I would gain practical experience in several areas that I needed for my future career as a nurse. Upon reflection, my perspective of what it entails to be a nurse has changed completely after I attended the course.
New practice approaches
Even though I was aware that nursing was a practical process, I did not know that there were several other skills apart from patient care that were important. I never knew certain pathways in nursing like emergency services, palliative care and infection control. The practicum process enabled me to learn other additional skills that could help me stay competent in my practice (Moon, 2013). I recalled being reminded of the importance of hand hygiene even when we were busy, especially before examining every patient. During every patient examination, I used alcohol gel to wash my hands as directed by my mentor (Moon, 2013).
Intraprofessional collaboration
Apart from hygiene, the process involved performing several tasks including the Work safety rules. In the recent years there has been increased focus on both patient and client safety while receiving care (Bulman & Schutz, 2013). The practical process involved how to handle patients while receiving care, patient transportation, and infection control and coordinating care as a team.
Health policy
According to the research by the institute of medicine (IOM), patient safety starts with simple processes like hand hygiene that can significantly reduce cross infections .The institute emphasizes on the need to decontaminate their hands frequently to limit the spread of infection (Naber & Wyatt, 2014). After learning about the different procedures and information about how to handle patients, including hygienic practices to avoid infection, I have become more cautious and now understand the importance of washin...