September 11, 2019: Manchester University Lab

Reflection
Pre-reflection:

This was my first experience with assisting a pharmacy practice lab. It was about obtaining vital
signs for P2 students. The lab instructors had a slide deck made from prior years with a nursing DVD for
video demonstrations. I was encouraged to facilitate this lab by teaching the students how to obtain
vital signs in a lecture format. There were two labs, one in the morning and one in the afternoon that
included athletic training students. As my experience includes being a critical care nurse for numerous
years, I originally felt confident about teaching this particular lab. I generally get most nervous when I
don’t feel comfortable teaching a topic. I practiced the slide deck from home and without clear
directions, I was able to lecture the students. For the morning lab, I went through each vital sign and
saved the videos for the end. I noticed it was slightly difficult to teach what feels like a basic topic at
years of experience. I started to incorporate some questions to the audience to encourage participation
and break the monotony of my voice. I had students check their own pulses and provided
demonstrations at appropriate times. Overall, the lecture met its goal to teach vital signs but I knew I
had to make improvements for the second lab.

Post-reflection:

The second lab was done slightly different to adjust from my morning lab observations. I could
tell it was difficult for me to maintain the attention of students through the entire slide deck and saving
the videos for end seems to make for a drawn out experience. For this class, I taught one vital sign at a
time and showed its related video and then practiced before going onto the next. This went much
smoother and the students were more engaged. I feel that making these small adjustments might have
created a stronger impact for retaining information for these students. This was a method to
incorporate listening, visual, and hands-on learning. I plan to remember this method as my philosophy
of teaching would like to incorporate various learning methods.