Reflection Of My Clinical Experiences

In the past two week, I was on the surgery ward having an 8 days clinical dietitian placement in the Frankston hospital, learning how to communicate with various groups of patients. For the early stages of my placement, I mainly learned to read the medical record and observed my supervisor to do the nutrient assessment and gave my feedback or comments to my supervisor. The critical incident occurred in the second week of my placement, which I went to do a short interview with the patient on my own. This was my first time and I needed to do the full assessment and the dietary history in this interview.

However, I became so nervous when I got into the ward. After I started to introduce myself, I did not know where I was going to do. I felt …show more content…
I learnt a lot of things in this incident and I also could find out something positive from this experience. For the first thing, I kept myself calm to sort out what I should do at the time. I showed active attitude to listen what the patient said and understood what his problem was. I kept the eye contact to show up my interest in his speaking and tried to build a good rapport with the patient. Caris-Verhallen et al. indicated that the eye contact could present a feeling of interest in the person to the others in the communication (2). I also was polite to thank for the time of patient when I finished my …show more content…
Feelings of nervous and helpless usually affect on the performance of clinical dietitian. Therefore, I tried to keep myself calm and figured out the priority thing that I need to do during the interview. Cooper also points out dealing with these situations immediately that is preferable (3). Daynes and Farris mentioned that if choosing to evade the problem and not dealing with the issues on your own immediately, the situation can be made worse (4). In addition, through this experience, I realized that my non-verbal communication would help me a lot in my future work, especially having communication with elderly people. Caris-Verhallen et al. stated that using the non-verbal communication is important when communication with elderly people who develop a hearing problem (1). Besides, language barrier is another important factor to influence on the effective communication. I realized English is not my first language, so it is quite hard to have the effective verbal communication with some patient to build up a good rapport. Based on the relevant literature, it recommended that heath professional should learn more in other second language for better understanding the patient