Reflection on Experience as a Graduate Nurse
Introduction
The nursing profession is one of the most crucial and differentiated profession, in which there is a need of maintaining balance between professional skills and interpersonal skills. For the purpose of being an effective and attractive career in nursing field, there is a need of developing some intensive amount of skills. In this context, as a graduate nurse, I require some crucial planning and practices so that I can be able to get some effective competencies. The presented essay is aimed to reflect my individual learning and understanding on different crucial nursing skills which are quite essential to be a successful and reflective practitioner in the related field. I am undertaking nursing course at graduation level (Newton and McKenna 2007). During the course, I would require undertaking a number of different activities, and curricular activities, which are directed to enhance my overall understanding, knowledge and skills regarding nursing profession and its perquisites. I need a better and practical plan for the purpose of developing an effective plan in direction to translate my theoretical knowledge into practical understanding (Chang and Hancock 2003). In regard to this, the presented essay explores some of the personal experiences and planning for the purpose of utilizing the theoretical understanding and knowledge of different crucial aspects of nursing skills and competencies.
Development of Personal Development Plan (PDP)
For the purpose of developing confidence and competences as registered nurse in my personality, I need to convert my knowledge acquired during the course into the practices. This conversion is quite essential for me as during the course works a number of different theories and as concepts related to the nursing styles and approaches are taught to us. However for a successful healthcare and nursing professional, effective knowledge and understanding of implications of such different theories in the real world is quite important (Maben, Latter and Clark2005). Without practical exposure and planning it will not be easy for me as a young nursing graduate to fulfill my career objectives in the most effective manner. In direction, I need to look forward to undertake various projects and tasks, which can be proved helpful for me to gain opportunities to serve the society and enhance my own experience of working as a professional nurse in the society.
In the first six months of the graduate nursing course, I have gained several crucial experiences, which helped me to understand different difficulties faced by a practitioner nurse and skills required for mitigating such problems. As a reflective practitioner, during the first six months as a graduate nurse, I have spotted several important areas where I need to work upon. In this context, there is a need of personality development plan. This planning will include various crucial aspects related to revealing various crucial aspects of my personality. For the purpose of enhancing my overall personality, I am planning undertaking an effective personality development plan. This plan will be accomplished under different headings:
Personal SWOT analysis
For the purpose of analyzing my own competencies and areas for development, I have conducted a SWOT analysis of my own personality. My personal SWOT analysis is presented as below:
Strength:
- My effective communication skill is one of the key strength which would be helpful for me to have good relation with patients.
- I have worked in various team-related tasks in which I have learnt how to deal with team and group dynamics and its related issues. This would help me working as a team
Weakness:
- The prime weakness of my personality is my short temper. I generally lose my calm quite easily, which is not good for a practitioner nurse.
- Management of time is also one of the prime areas on which, I need to work upon. As per my previous experience, I can say that I feel problems in meet the deadlines for the projects assigned to me.
Opportunities:
- During my graduate nursing course, I will learn a number of various aspects of different nursing-related theories and concepts, which would be helpful for me to improve my skills
- Till now in the course, I have undertaken a number of differentiated practical and real life projects, which will to enhance my overall experience regarding different types nursing role and responsibilities in my future career in near future.
Threats:
- Increasing competition in the field of nursing has enhanced pressure over me to develop some of the crucial and differentiated personality skills
- Frequent advancement in the technologies used in medical science is also one of the threatening issues for a new nursing graduate. Owing to this reason, I would also require to be more responsive towards technology.
- Personal Skill audit
The personal skill Audit is also one of the primary tasks undertaken within a Personality Development Plan. In context to this personal skill audit, I would audit my different skills on the basis of the scale from less important to most important. in relation to this, as per the auditing practice, I have revealed some of the crucial skills which are needed to be look upon quite intensively:
- I need to control my anger and keeping my calm as during the graduate nursing course I have come to know that for a nursing professional, there is quite demanding working environment in which, he has to keep his calm in the most frequent manner(Mooney 2007).
- Tight working schedules and heavy workload can also be considered as some crucial feature of nursing profession. For having compliance with such requirements, I also require to manage my time in the most effective manner so that I can accomplish tasks timely and effectively (Gustafsson and Fagerberg 2003). I need to develop this skill intensively.
- I would also require learn working in long working hours and having late sitting (Nutley 2008). I feel that it is quite hard for me to have long sittings, which does not suit to a professional nursing professional.
- Development of action plan
I have highlighted some of the critical risks possesses by me in my personality. In order to translate such crucial knowledge attained during the course into the practice, I require a well-designed action plan with strategic measures and time line so that I can be able to overcome weaknesses of my skills and strengthen the positive aspects of my personality. In this context an action plan is developed as below:
| Skills | Existing status | Desired outcome | Strategies | Estimated time required |
| 1. Anger Management | Very poor, and needs immediate consideration | I want to control my anger especially in pressure situation so that I can keep my calm down | For this purpose, first of all, I would go for practices like Meditation so that I can be able to control the expression of my emotions in difficult situation. In addition to this, I would also require undertaking of knowledge from various literature on anger management to learn various techniques for managing temper ((Mooney 2007). | 3-4 weeks |
| 2. Time management Skills | Satisfactory and needs to considered as long term project | I want to learn some crucial skills through which I can be able to audit my daily activities so that I can be able to manage my time accordingly and save time for my personal Affairs | For learning time management strategy would consider the strategy of learning by doing. In this regard, I will make schedule for my daily activities. I would try to follow this schedule strictly, so that I can be able to track activities which generally take longer time than usual. I would try to cut such time (Gustafsson and Fagerberg 2003). In addition to prioritization of activities as per their importance will also help me to accomplish my goals in the most effective manner. | I think that I would take almost 2-3 week for me to be acclimatized of this schedule. |
| 3. Skills of Late sitting and late hour working | Fair, yet still require some consideration | In need to develop my sitting capacity up to a significant level so that I can be able to devote some intensive amount of time towards my duties and assigned tasks | For this purpose, there is a need of some intensive amount of long term planning. For this purpose, I need to have habits of long night studies (Chambers, Schwartz and Boath 2003). Initially, it would not be easy for me, later it would be included in my personal habits | This will be a long term project which would take more than 4 to 6 weeks |
This will be an extended personal development plan which will be helpful for me to overcoming my certain limitations and weaknesses that can be proved harmful in achieving desired goals.
Conclusion
On the basis of reflection of first six months as a graduate nurse, it can be concluded that there are certain positive as well as negative aspects of my personality. As a reflective practitioner, I have undertaken skill audit for the purpose of reflecting level some of crucial skills, which are quite essential for a nursing professional to possess. In order to enhance some essential skills and converting theory into practice, the essay has reflected an effective and well elaborated action plan, which mentions some crucial strategies and tactics for personality enhancement.
References
Chambers, R., Schwartz, A.L. and Boath, E. 2003. Beating Stress in the NHS. Radcliffe Publishing.
Chang, E., Hancock, K. 2003. Role stress and role ambiguity in new nursing graduates in Australia. Nursing and Health Sciences 5, pp 155–163.
Gustafsson, C. and Fagerberg, I. 2003. Reflection, the way to professional development? Journal of Clinical Nursing 13, pp 271–280.
Maben, J., Latter, S. and Clark, J.M. 2005. The theory-practice gap: impact of professional–bureaucratic work conflict on newly-qualified nurses. Issues and Innovations in Nursing Education 55(4), pp 465–477.
Mooney M. 2007. Professional socialization: The key to survival as a newly qualified nurse. International Journal of Nursing Practice13, pp 75–80.
Newton, J.M. and McKenna, L. 2007. The transitional journey through the graduate year: A focus group study. International Journal of Nursing Studies 44, pp 1231–1237.
Nutley, T. 2008. The Little Book of Personal Development. Lulu.com.