Self awareness or self doubt?

I think you are experiencing a wee bit of panic as the magnitude of the change that is about to occur begins to dawn on you. For three years, you’ve been able to “hide behind” your student status and now, suddenly, in a few short months, that option will be taken away from you and you’ll feel somewhat exposed and vulnerable. We’ve all been there, azulinebloo, and those of us who are self-aware and reflective will be able to appreciate your anxiety and will help you through it. Those who aren’t, aren’t worth your time.

I wish you well!

Reflecting on reflection? You could go mad just thinking about it.

To quote Edith Piaf,

“Non, Je ne regrette rien”

I would rather a yet-to-develop self aware reflecting nurse than a “I know it all cos my certificate says I do so don’t try to tell me anything” idiot.

When I sat my drug assessment (old style training) in my 3rd year, my mentor gave up after the following 3 Q+As…

Q: What’s an anti-depressant?
A: White and round?

Q: ok… Can you name some unwanted side effects of chlorpromazine?
A: It slows the thinking down.

Q: No, that’s meant to happen.
A: Oh - so it does that as well as sedate them?

I had to go back and do it again.

Thankfully, the next time I knew anti-depressants were actually other colours and that chlopromazine was also good for getting a sun tan.

Bloo, anyone who isn’t constantly assessing their own practice, and having the occasional crisis of confidence as a result isn’t doing the job properly. The job in question being “member of the human race”. (i.e. a humane person)

I could rant on but I can`t be botherd. Reflection gives the Beakie`s of this world something to waffle about, another meaningless task to give their pupils and something to scrawl his red pen over. I don`t do anything differently to what I did when I was in the army. A small patrol base in Co. Fermanagh used to have the words ” a sucking wound to the chest is natures way of telling you you`ve lost the firefight” painted on the wall. Any number of professionals have to assess their practice and some have to do it very, very carefully. That`s as it should be. But no one makes such a deal of it as nursing. It`s tedious, pointless and away from the ivory tower no one is remotely interested. You won`t have a good relationship with every patient, Bloo, you won`t be adept at every skill but you`ll make the transition. Believe in yourself and you`ll do it with aplomb.

Just to clarify, Bloo, I don`t think you`re getting my point. Everyone is “reflecting”, brickies, joiners, butchers. The supermarkets are expert, everything they do is refined to the nth degree to maximise their chances of parting you from as much money as they can. I did 30 months of operational duty in the army and I spent a winter training in Norway. If I wasn`t thinking about what I was doing, conferring, reading then the consequence could have been dire, in the worst case a ride on the shoulder of six of my colleagues with a good number of breezeblocks in my coffin to make it a respectable weight. My question is simply why oh why does nursing have to make such a song and bloody dance about this process.

You’re right Bloo, it’s a very unquantifiable job but I’d leave the 5 year cure to Jesus and his Apostles, some folks with chronic problems are always going to need occassional trips to the bin. The fact that you’re reflecting means you’re doing well. It shows you’re conscienscious, considerate and constantly willing to change to improve your skills. You’re posting this because you care and that’s what it’s all about. It’s not called “the caring profession” for nothing.

As for not managing a clinical skill. Well… shock, horror… imagine a student nurse that wasn’t perfect and couldn’t do everything!!! You got over it and got on with it. Well done! Some folks never do. Some folks have things like say, eyedrops, that they just find too horrible to ever do, so they simply get someone else to do it. I remember one nurse in an EMI who was physically sick whenever she saw faeces. How did she hold down her job? Well 1) she was incredibly nice and 2) she was brilliant at everything else, so folks helped her out.

I agree with OSB about the song and dance around reflection.

It’s a bit like care plans. Imagine a plumber comes to your house to fit a washing machine. You wait for him to start work but there is no noise. 30 minutes later and still there is silence. You walk into the kitchen and find him sitting on your kitchen floor writng out the aims of installing the washing machine, how he is going to connect the cold and hot feeds. What he hopes to achieve by doing this and how he will measure the outcome. You’d either refuse to pay for those 30 minutes or more likely kick his incompetent arse out the door. You expect a trained, competent plumber to come in and do the job, perhaps record the time he arrived and left and note any extraordinary work that had to be done. Nothing else required.

Reflection is the same. If he doesnt bother measuring the height to cut the hole through the adjoining unit and damages your fridge, he thinks “Shit, I won’t do that again, in future I’ll always make a proper measurement”, hardly an essay.

You’ll always be “reflecting”. If you’re anything like me, your real nurse training will start after September. Surprisingly, patient care will be a doddle but weaving through the politics of ward life and worst of all finding your best way of managing the nursing assistants will offer you many nights of reflection. Your colleagues will help on this, you’ll reflect on their style of doing things. Best of all, you won’t need a word processor for this reflection, just a vodka and coke.

;o)

Experience is something you get just after you needed it.

Reflection is a good thing for a developing nurse in the first few years - because it challenges the person in many ways.

MH is full of hypocrisy and dichotomy so it’s a good thing to know yourself before you apply it to your work practise.

Reflection might well be done to a crisp - but then we find that the things we can actually develop linearly and freely from conceptualisation into a practical reality - like nurse reflective development; care plans; nursing models - often get more attention than the areas that require us to be more inwardly aware and challenging of ourselves and our service - like how not to disempower a patient; ethical decision making; discerning whether to deny or uphold the patient’s choice to refuse treatment when involuntary patient.

To complete these emotively and ethically challenging actions without reflecting on the decisions you make is to become an obedient automaton.