Development Plan

Alysia Brillhart

While I was reading through the reflective summaries I have written throughout this

program, I was able to identify some strengths and weaknesses I have went through during this

nursing program. Overall, I am pleased with myself for having so much growth over these last

few years of nursing school both as an individual and as a future nurse. I will most definitely

work on the weaknesses that I feel that I have so that I can continue to grow into the best nurse

that I can possibly be.

One weakness that I feel that I have experienced is learning to manage my time. I

remember my very first clinical and feeling overwhelmed taking care of one patient. I

remember I had a hard time knowing when to do my assessments, when to pass medications,

when to take a blood sugar, when to take vital signs, etc. I also had a hard time managing my

time wisely so that I wouldn’t get behind on charting. However, now that I have officially

completed my clinicals and precepting, I feel that I have grown a lot with learning how to

manage my time effectively. I was able to care for up to three patients during precepting. While

caring for three patients, I had to do assessments on all three of them 2-3 times during the

shift, pass medications on all of them, assist them with ADL’s, etc. I was able to adapt to caring

for three patients and manage my time effectively throughout precepting. As a nurse, I will

continue to manage my time wisely by prioritizing patient care at the beginning of my shift and

re-evaluating prioritization as the shift goes on. I have also learned that it helps to chart while

you perform tasks with patients or at least writing times down and tasks that I did, so that

charting isn’t being brushed off until the end of the shift. In addition, I learned that it is ok to

delegate tasks to other people if I am feeling overwhelmed with all of the tasks that I need to
complete to help manage time as well. I feel that developing time management skills can go

along with ASN Student Learning Outcome 2, 5 and 6. I can incorporate outcome 2 and 5

because if you use an interdisciplinary approach and communication, such as delegating tasks

and working together, this can help manage time. I can integrate outcome 6 because time

management impacts the care that I provide to all of my patients. If I really lacked the ability to

manage my time, then I probably couldn’t say for sure that I was demonstrating caring, safe

and competent care to all of my patients. Overall, I feel that time management is a task that

you continuously work on and continue to develop with the more experience you get as a

nurse, so I think the strategies I mentioned will be a good way to help keep me on track with

my time management skills.

Another weakness that I can identify is that I really didn’t have a whole lot of experience

to utilize some of the skills that I learned in nursing school. For example, I had the opportunity

to attempt to start an IV, but I wish I could have had more experiences to become more

confident in that skills. This weakness can also go along with ASN Student Learning Outcome 6. I

am sure as a nurse I will have plenty of experiences to insert IV’s and I feel that the more IV’s I

am able to attempt to insert, the more comfortable I will become.

Overall, I feel that any nursing skill will become easier the more you perform the skill, so

I will definitely continue to expand my knowledge on the skills and attitudes that I have learned

from this program. The skills and attitudes I have learned so far will help me continue to

become a compassionate, knowledgeable nurse that provides safe, effective care to all of my

future patients. I definitely feel that Aultman College has done a great job with preparing me

for my future as a nurse.