REFLECTIVE PRACTICE

Reflective Practice Module

Reflective Practice Module

In this assignment, I need to reflect on the situation that taken place duringmy clinical placement to develop and utilise my interpersonal skills in order tomaintain the therapeutic relationships with my patient. In this reflection, I am going to use Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle. This model is a recognisedframework for my reflection. Gibbs (1988) consists of six stages to complete onecycle which is able to improve my nursing practice continuously and learningfrom the experience for better practice in the future. The cycle starts with adescription of the situation, next is to analysis of the feelings, third is anevaluation of the experience, fourth stage is an analysis to make sense of theexperience, fifth stage is a conclusion of what else could I have done and finalstage is an action plan to prepare if the situation arose again (NHS, 2006). Bairdand Winter (2005, p.156) give some reasons why reflection is require in thereflective practice. They state that a reflect is to generate the practice knowledge,assist an ability to adapt new situations, develop self-esteem and satisfaction aswell as to value, develop and professionalizing practice.

However, Siviter (2004,p.165) explain that reflection is about gaining self-confidence, identify when toimprove, learning from own mistakes and behaviour, looking at other peopleperspectives, being self-aware and improving the future by learning the past.In my context with the patient, it is important for me to improve thetherapeutic relationship which is the nurse-patient relationship. In the therapeuticrelationship, there is the therapeutic rapport establish from a sense of trust and amutual understanding exists between a nurse and a patient that build in a specia link of the relationship (Harkreader and Hogan, 2004, p.243). (Peplau 1952, citedin Harkreader and Hogan 2004, p.245) note that a good contact in a therapeuticrelationship builds trust as well as would raise the patient's self-esteem whichcould lead to new personal growth for the patient. Besides, (Ruesch 1961, citedin Arnold and Boggs 2007, p.200) mention the purpose of the therapeuticcommunication is to improve the patient's ability to function. So in order toestablish a therapeutic nurse-patient interaction, a nurse must show up caring,sincerity, empathy and trustworthiness (Kathol, 2003, p.33).

Those attitudes could be expressed by promoting the effective communication and relationshipsby the implementation of interpersonal skills. Johnson (2008) define theinterpersonal skills is the total ability to communicate effectively with other people. Chitty and Black (2007, p.218) mention that communication is theexchange of information, thought and ideas via verbal and non-verbal which bothpresent simultaneously. They explain that verbal communication is consists of allspeech whereas non-verbal communication consists of gestures, postures, facialexpressions, tone and level of volume. Thus, in my reflection in this assignmentwould be discussed on my development of therapeutic relationship in thecircumstance of the nurse-patient relationship using the interpersonal skills.

My reflection is about one patient whom I code her as Mrs. A, not a real name(Appendix I) to protect the confidentiality of patient's information (NMC, 2004).In this paragraph I would describe on the event takes place and describethat event during my clinical ...