Refining Professional Portfolio

[Instructor name]

Putting Professional Development Plan into action

The Professional Development Plan (PDP) which was initially developed was not adequate. Consequently, slight modifications were considered for everything included in the plan. As a result, the plan which was implemented was better and acceptable, while it offered good refinement of the development plan.

One of the learning goals was to learn new developments occurring in the field that are directly relevant to the nurse practitioner. The related actions included knowing the treatments for patients with non-average or extreme biomedical measures, attempting to participate in the clinical interventions that have been planned in the facility, experiential learning through learning by doing, understanding risks in complex patient care situations, and learning the ethics of the trade.

Consequently, it was decided that the learning goal was to be achieved with the specified actions. Most of the activities were performed in parallel during the clinical placement. Accordingly, the action plans were revised as given above and their implementation was done.

Specific consideration was given to patients who had abnormal and distinct diagnostics and biomedical measures. It was found that 3 patients had abnormal patient histories, consequently, it was learned that these patients were to be treated differently and they required more frequent administrations and vital signs than other patients, as prescribed by the doctor. These patients remained admit in the hospital from 20 March to 11 April. These patients were given special care and their measurements and tests related to their disease were done more frequently (usually twice or thrice the regular number).

Furthermore, one action plan could not be fully implemented as it was not possible to fully participate in a clinical intervention trial. However, participation as a blinded nurse was done in one clinical intervention which still taught about the procedure of rehydration. These trials were conducted at patients in the hospital and spanned about 2 weeks from 30 March to 13 April. The rehydration was administered to patients on as available basis.

Experiential learning was an easy task as all the activities that were performed in the practice between 20 March and 10 May provided on-hands learning of all the nursing activities and techniques. The duty hours were 8 hours of a single shift.

It was absolutely necessary to understand the risks inherent in complex patient situations. For example, one patient was diagnosed with acute blood pressure and diabetes mellitus. Consequently, it was very important to understand that the patient was old and diseased enough to possibly die. Accordingly, the need to deal with him was to be refined with reading. One book on nursing ethics was read by Murray and Holmes (2009). Finally, it was necessary to learn ethics in nursing which was provided by the same book.

Reflections on the Professional Development Plan

The first activity was to know the treatment of patients with extreme biomedical measures. This was accomplished very easily. It was learned that not all patients are equal. The nurse especially needs to concentrate on patients who show exaggerated vital signs or other ...