Senior Capstone Reflection

Improved Essays
Senior Capstone Reflection
College of Nursing Course Objectives Throughout the course of my career as a student as WSU CON I have grown my skills in vast ways. I have learned what it means to be professional in every aspect of care. One example of applying management and leadership principles in a clinical setting that stands out to me during my experience thus far was when I was on the adult oncology and nephrology unit. The nurse that I was paired up for the day had 4 patients and I took on main responsibility for 3 of them. I had taken care of 1 of the patients in preceding weeks; however, the 2 others were new to me. The shift was going fairly smoothly. I had learned the charting system and how to interact with my colleagues as a beginning
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As the shift went on, I delivered medications, completed charting, assessments, vitals, and more. Then, there was a staff shortage problem on another unit and the charge had to leave. The nurse that I was with took over for charge and left me to continue responsibility for the 3 patients. I built a rapport with her and showed her my skills, confidence, and knowledge, and she trusted me with a long leash of free reign in taking care of her patients. One of the patients had an eventful day as she was going through an intense round of chemotherapy; however, I still managed to give my attention to the other patients. After my shift at clinical was over, the nurse I was with commended me for everything I did and joked about having me stay another few hours to continue to help her. This day will continue to stick out in my mind as …show more content…
While I could focus on many different goals that I have reached, I wanted to reflect on a specific time during clinical that I used critical and creative thinking to solve a problem. This took place on the adult psychiatric unit at Sacred Heart Medical Center where we received in report that a patient had fallen on night shift and had an extremely low blood pressure. She did not hit her head. This patient was admitted onto the unit that afternoon and had grown increasingly confused, distressed, and disorientated. She had no history of delusions or hallucinations; however, her care team did not understand why she was neurologically presenting the way she was. During my assessments and conversation with her, I discovered that she had been drinking an excessive amount of water because she thought that would “flush” the medication out of her. I used creative and critical thinking to put together that the excessive water may have lead to hyponatremia. I reasoned that it may be this along with taking Wellbutrin, that was causing this patient to present this way neurologically. I raised my thoughts with the charge, she had labs drawn, and we were able to figure out this was the problem. This is the type of critical and creative thinking that I will be taking into my practice as a pediatric oncology

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