Author: Avery (Page 3 of 6)

Pre-Hospital Elder Life Program Reflection

September 12, 2022 / Avery / 1 Comment

Before volunteering at the HELP program, I feel as though I have a relatively well-rounded knowledge of delirium and the factors to prevent delirium. Last year in nursing school we spent a lot of time going over delirium and ways to prevent it. This was extremely important because delirium is becoming more prevalent in hospitals, especially in the elderly population. Delirium occurs when a person becomes confused or disoriented to person, place, time, and/or location. This can make a person’s hospital stay longer than anticipated and affect their health. The factors to help prevent delirium include having the patient go for walks or doing range of motion exercises, frequent reorientation, adequate nutrition, ensuring they have their glasses or other devices, and making sure they are sleeping at night. These factors will help prevent delirium in patients that are at risk of developing it.

This past summer, I worked at a hospital and cared for a patient that had unfortunately developed delirium. I was working a night shift and the patient was extremely confused and disoriented to time. They kept getting out of bed, assuming it was morning. The patient did not get adequate sleep and was even more confused in the morning. This experience solidified the knowledge I was given last year in class.

My goals for the HELP program volunteer experience are to help the patient reduce their risk of developing delirium by reorienting them and providing the preventative measures that we have learned about. Another goal would be to get the patient to do ROM exercises. Since I will be volunteering, I cannot physically help the patient get up and go for a walk, but I would like to help them do ROM exercises. My last goal would be to be aware of the warning signs of delirium and be able to notify the staff working with the patient if they seem to be more disoriented to person, place, situation, or time than in previous encounters.

I do not think I am nervous about this volunteer experience. I feel as though I am ready to talk with the patient and see if I can help them prevent delirium by speaking with them and helping them person ROM exercises. My feelings prior to volunteering are feelings of excitement to be able to help someone and hopefulness for a good experience! For the aging population, I am aware of the community services that help pay for health or living expenses and help provide rides to patients that are unable to drive.

Protected: A Influence Paper: The Impact of Exercise on Depression Levels in College Students

May 7, 2022 / Avery / Enter your password to view comments.

Excerpt on The Impact of Exercise on Depression Levels in College Students

May 7, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

The influence paper, “The Impact of Exercise on Depression Levels in College Students” is a research paper that was worked on and created throughout the semester by three other classmates: McKenna Remillard, Kallie Collinge, Madison Lomax, and myself. Through this research paper, we discussed the question “In college-aged individuals who suffer from depression, what is the impact of exercise in conjunction with current pharmacological treatment, as compared to current pharmacological treatment alone to impact the individual’s symptoms of depression?” by researching three different peer-reviewed journal articles. Depression is a problem that we see in society, and, through this research, we wanted to discuss exercise as a non-pharmacological way to treat depression symptoms.

Protected: Influence Paper

Mental Health Simulation Reflection

May 2, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

Before the first simulation, I was nervous about what I would experience and how I would be able to respectfully discuss information to help the patient. The first simulation helped me better understand the information we were learning in mental health class, especially regarding depression and suicidal ideations. After the second simulation, I felt that I gained so much insight into certain mental disorders including schizophrenia, borderline personality disorder, and alcoholism. I also learned that I could communicate in a way to gain trust and rapport but also help the patient. For example, the patient who has schizophrenia was very paranoid about the clinic and the cameras in the room. I noticed she enjoyed speaking about the color yellow and her parents. After I noticed these two ideas, I incorporated them into my rapport to develop a trusting patient-nurse relationship. After the second simulation, I felt much better about my skills and rapport.

In the first simulation, the biggest challenge my group and I dealt with was a patient having suicidal ideations. We addressed this problem by going over the Columbia-Suicide Scale and then discussing inpatient care. One challenge I faced in the second simulation was during the interaction with a patient that had an addiction to alcohol. We were discussing his problem and he brought up the fact that he was an NP. I asked him what he would say to his patient about their drinking if they were developing some of the problems he was. He thought I was undermining his intellect and ability to care. I addressed this problem by explaining my thought process and made sure to help him understand I was not undermining his ability, and more was hoping for active participation in care. He understood and said if he was his patient, he would most likely refer them for help for their alcohol abuse.

Through this process, I learned how important the mental health nursing process is in every situation regardless of if you’re working in a mental health unit or not. I learned how to create better rapport and how to assess nonverbal cues. I also learned how to ask and discuss difficult topics such as suicide or trauma. I believe through simulation I am prepared and ready to address mental health problems in the clinical setting.

Final Reflection

April 30, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

Through this team project, I learned a lot about myself and my teammates, as well as ways to manage conflict. Before this project, I knew I had characteristics of leadership, but I often struggled with not being the leader. However, in this project I was able to let another individual lead and I recommended ideas but was not the team leader. This newfound knowledge will help me in the future with my nursing practice because I will be able to lead others but also let others lead, which I think is a very valuable characteristic in a team. This team project helped me better understand quality improvement and evidence-based practice initiatives that will be part of my nursing practice. The project allowed me to work as a team to finalize an evidence-based practice report that helped me understand how to work in a team on something that may be a large part of my practice in the future.

Our team process was dividing and conquering. We divided up and equally worked on the project. After we finished our piece we would peer-review the other team members’ work and critically appraise it. This allowed us to work efficiently and work well. This team process allowed us to complete valuable work for our project. I learned that as a team member myself I can lead but also follow. I also learned how to recommend another member to change something in a positive way that does not cause strife. This project truly helped me learn many things about myself and my ability to work within a team.

Ethical Considerations for EBP

April 25, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

After completing all ethical assignments, my understanding of the nurse’s contribution to ethical conduct of research and implementation of research has not changed dramatically. Ethical conduct of research and implementation of research are so important in nursing because there is a potential you will be basing your care on this research. I knew it was important for a nurse to thoroughly check the ethical conduct of a research paper because it will be used to care for patients. Due to this, I believe my understanding has grown but has not changed dramatically.

It is also very important for nurses to know the historical evolution and principles of research ethics. Understanding historical events such as The Tuskegee Study is important so something like that will never happen in the future. In Miss Evers’ Boys, it showed how problematic and ethically wrong The Tuskegee Study was. It is a very good movie for nurses to watch to understand how important ethics is for their patients. Nurses should know the historical lack of research and ethics in studies so, in the future, they can provide better ethics for populations that need medical care.

After finishing the course objectives, I feel as though I am very capable of participating in the ethical conduct of research, quality improvement, and evidence-based practice initiatives. When I become a nurse, I plan to use these course objectives to help initiate evidence-based practices with my team as well as participate in ethical conduct and quality improvement to further better my care of individuals. This course has given me the key fundamentals to continue to make ethical conduct, quality improvement, and evidence-based practices better for the future.

Assumptions

April 23, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

My assumption about the nurse’s role in ethics regarding evidence implementation and generation before completing all the research ethics assignments was that nurses use a lot of evidence to complete care, so they need to make sure that the evidence they receive is accurate and ethical for the patient. The nurse needs to make sure the resources they have been peer-reviewed and monitored for things like plagiarism. I assumed that nurses found their evidence and made sure it was ethical before presenting it to others. I think nurses contribute to the ethical conduct of research and implementation of research findings by working with a team to make sure the articles and evidence that is being found are accurate and peer-reviewed. I think nurses play a pivotal role in making sure the evidence being provided is ethical.

Appraisal and Synthesis

April 10, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

Through evidence appraisal and synthesis, I discovered a lot about my team’s topic of amount of exercise related to depression symptoms in college-aged people. Although our topic was specific to an age group I was surprised with the number of articles and appraisal there were for it. The literature appraisal and synthesis did not change my assumptions on this topic. Most of the appraisals showed that with exercise depression symptoms decreased, which was my original assumption. These findings will impact my future nursing practice because I will incorporate exercise into almost every care plan I create. Before reading these articles, I knew exercise was important to maintain proper mental and physical health. However, I know have numerous articles that helped me understand why exercise was so important. I plan to incorporate these finding a lot in my future nursing practice. My team members and I all had similar assumptions about this topic, so we all arrived at very similar conclusions about the findings. Although we came to the same conclusions and there were no challenges to our collaboration, if there were we would make sure to all meet up and talk though these challenges.

Protected: A Reflection: Addressing the Interconnection between Mental Health and Physical Health

April 7, 2022 / Avery / Enter your password to view comments.

From Inquiry through Discovery

February 25, 2022 / Avery / 0 Comments

After my team completed the PICOT question, we did have to revise it slightly. We needed to be more specific on the idea of quality of life in our question. We were challenged with how to change the question to be more specific but also still make sense for what we wanted to do. We solved this challenge by talking through it together, each of us came up with different ways to say the question/statement and pulled ideas from each group member to make a more thorough PICOT question. Through this challenge, we were able to succeed on having a better, well-formed question. We did not have any challenges with team collaboration, each team member participated actively. If we had problems, we would have sat down and spoken through the problem to achieve success.