NURSING

Reflective Nursing Report

Reflective Nursing Report

Executive Summary

Nursing practices take place in more complex environment than other medical practices and also change continuously (Rooda & Nardi, 1999, Walthew, 2004). There are several factors that affect the severity of this environment. Nursing profession requires critical thinking and increased insight for the application of knowledge gained from practices (Maynard, 1996; Paul & Heaslip, 1995). As new knowledge develops with time, nurses must incorporate it into the existing framework and alter nurse care according to it. According to John (1995), the idea behind writing a reflective report is to encourage advantageous practice through learning and understating of practitioner gained through experiences. Reflective reports are always considered to be a significant activity for nurses as the previous formal assessments are often based on it. The moral and ethical knowledge is also evaluated and analysed in reflective essays that either the ethics or actions during the practice match with each other and how and what factors urged practitioner to act in different ways (Wilkinson 1996).

For writing this reflective report I used guidelines of Taylor (2000) for reflective practice. In this report case of Miss Brown is reflected during which patient's pain was assessed and managed. The report demonstrates how a nurse learned different ways of assessing post-operative pain of an old lady. This report also reflects that how the nurse went through decision making process and how did she communicated with her seniors and also the patient for pain management. This reflective report presents a critical account on how a patient's pain management and assessment who has gone through an orthopaedic surgery. It also includes an account of administration of controlled drugs given to the patient according to the policies defined by NMC standards and the hospital. It also emphasize on following the guidelines related to controlled drugs medication in order to avoid any hazard or side effects.

Patient Profile

Mrs Brown was a 78 years old woman and as the NMC (2008) states that the individual's right to confidentiality must be respected at all times and therefore the patient in question shall be named Mrs Brown. This lady was admitted to the ward as a trauma patient, posts a mechanical fall at home resulting in a fractured neck of femur and was under the care of the Orthopaedic team. She then went on to have a total hip replacement in theatre the following day after which she returned to the ward. I received care of Mrs Brown 9 days post operation and as result of this she had been having extensive physiotherapy and was requiring assistance of one to two persons with mobilising and required minimal assistance with all other activities of daily living. However I was handed over by the night staff that her pain had not been adequately managed as she was requiring regular controlled analgesia overnight and I noticed over the past few days also which was given to good effect but was not long lasting.

Section I: Introduction

The reason behind writing this report ...