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Challenges I faced in my weekly clinical experience

One of the main challenges that I faced is high work load. This was a result of shortage of

health care workers in the health facility. Many medical practitioners do not practice medicine

causing some active health care worker to be overburdened. This caused us to work for long hours

during the days without taking a break.

The other thing was trying to cope with various psychological problems such as fear of

sudden deaths of patients as well as anxiety. Working in atmosphere where the rate of infections is

very high, the also brought the fear of being infected with contagious diseases which I can later

transmit to my friends as well as my family members.

Despite facing some challenges during my week seven of work, there were also some

benefits I got from that experience. Fastly, it helped me to better my relations with other healthcare

worker as well as the way of handling various patients by enhancing their wellness. I was able to shift

my focus by focusing on a patient's wellness rather than just the illness itself. I also acquired various

skills including how to track financial and clinical data such as health status and treatments overtime

and across settings both at individual to population levels which helps to know what the patients and

the community is facing, among others.

Describe the assessment of a patient, detailing the signs and symptoms, assessment, plan

of care and possible different diagnosis

Patient assessment is the process of checking the appearance of the patient to know his

health status. This include admission assessment which mainly focuses on the arrival of the patient

to the ward and the reason for admission. The patient is then close checked, noting the type of

illness and injury, his immunity and the medications needed. After close checking the patients, the

nurses go ahead in checking the general appearance of the patient including his physical and

emotional state. They check whether the patient is showing any sings such as respiratory rate and

heart rate which indicates the possibility of cardiovascular problem, clubbing of fingers and

breathing problems which indicate lung disease.

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What I learned from my week’s clinical experience

Working in the field of healthcare can be sometimes difficult, but from what I learned is that

its always good to maintain positive altitude as the patients look up to you to give them hope. This

will be helping me to cope with which ever challenges that I may facing in my line of duty. The other

thing that I learned is the ability to think critically. This will be helping me in making evidence-based

decisions based on objective analysis.

Support your plan of care with the current peer reviewed research guideline

Assessing the patient

The first process is to assess the patient by examining all relevant data, which may include:

head to toe assessment, medical history, lab results, vital signs, and the conversations with the

patient.

Identifying and list nursing diagnosis

After assessing the patient, the next step is to try to identify the potential and current health

problem that can easily be handled such as fever acute pain among others, without the help of a

physician.

Setting the goal for the patient

This about setting the desired goals of how to deal the patient and meet his wellness. This by

assessing the patient, analyzing his unwellness and diagnosing him. These can be short-term goals

which can be set by both the nurse and the patient such as resolving fever and acute pain as well as

long term goals such as managing diabetes.

Implementing the necessary actions

The necessary actions are then taken to achieve the set patients’ goals such as giving

medications and resolving the pain that the patient may be experiencing. All these actions being

taken as well as the intervention made are the documented including the orders from the

physicians.
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Evaluating the progress and changing the care plan as needed

The last step is reviewing the progress of the patients after attending to him to see whether

there is any improvement. If there is no positive change or improvement that is taking place, all the

medications that were being offered and other interventions should be terminated and changed.
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References

Clinical guidelines (Nursing): Nursing assessment. (n.d.). The Royal Children's Hospital: The Royal

Children's Hospital. https://www.rch.org.au/rchcpg/hospital_clinical_guideline_index/

Nursing_assessment/

Developing a nursing care plan for your hospital. (2020, May 6).

TigerConnect. https://tigerconnect.com/blog/how-to-develop-a-nursing-care-plan-for-your-

hospital/

The diagnostic process - Improving diagnosis in health care - NCBI bookshelf. (2015, December 29).

National Center for Biotechnology

Information. https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/books/NBK338593/

Franjic, S. (2020). Professionalism in nursing. Saudi Journal of Nursing and Health Care, 3(9), 241-

245. https://doi.org/10.36348/sjnhc.2020.v03i09.001

Nurses take on new and expanded roles in health care. (n.d.).

RWJF. https://www.rwjf.org/en/library/articles-and-news/2015/01/nurses-take-on-new-and-

expanded-roles-in-health-care.html