A Time to Reflect

My first eight weeks at the University of London has been very great, despite many challenges that came my way. All the same, I feel that I need to constantly reflect and remind myself concerning my class group and every other group I encounter, that it is not always hypercritical, and if disagreement does occur, it is merely differences of opinions and does not harmfully reflect myself as an individual. Through the use of this reflection and making use of such understanding, I am confident that my progress as a health professional may, perhaps, be immeasurably enhanced, as I would be in a position to boldly interact with patients with different beliefs and backgrounds.

One of the group exercises, we tackled, was finding out various sized boundaries that each person had. My partner had an exceptionally close boundary, and when she moved into my boundary she still was relaxed, whereas I was awfully uncomfortable, and felt uneasy. I responded to her coming into my space by actually removing myself from the position, and moving far away from where she was. Formerly, I did not question or even realize the influence various boundaries made on human beings or how they may be the reasons behind diverse boundary sizes. I thought that one of the most significant aspects of these tasks was establishing the way everybody had dissimilar sized boundaries, probably, arising from the varied cultural backgrounds.

This boundary disparity between the two of us could have been a result of cultural differences. My partner was brought up in an environment where it was helpful to be in close immediacy to one another, whereas I was taught that giving people space was courteous. I dealt with this challenge of boundaries by connecting it to nursing professional boundaries. Nursing professional boundaries are the spaces between the nurse’s power and the client’s vulnerability with the nurse’s power coming from knowledge of the client’s personal history, and their powerful professional position (National Council of State Boards of Nursing, 2007, p. 3).

For the nurse to have full confidence of a patient is a vital thing, it is important to act in a professional manner. To assist the patient in developing independence, the nurse needs to generate boundaries that permit safe and professional relationship with the patient. By recognizing these professional boundaries and the reality that every patient will have unique boundaries depending on their cultural background, I now realize that I will be expected to repeatedly be aware of every my action, and work towards sustaining professional standards all the time. By being conscious and reflecting on my clinical practice, I can confidently keep away from boundary violations, maintain the patient safe and constantly practice in a competently consistent way.

Self awareness is an important skill for professional evaluation and monitoring (Usher, and Holmes, 2006, p. 110). This is so because of the fact that the professional nurse has to be constantly aware of her personality and the impact she can have on the patient. The self aware nurse offers value to her job and her work of nursing as a profession, and in doing so practices with proficiency and assurance aiming to offer the highest class of care, therefore creating an encouraging and secure environment for the patient. I will therefore continue to strive to become more self aware. Through using this reflection framework, I have been able to discover key strengths within my character that I will be aware to use in my nursing practice. I now know that my team skills as a co-ordinator can greatly benefit groups by being able to help people see relations between ideas. My reflective listening skills can not only be advantageous to the group by allowing discussion to flow efficiently but will also be helpful for the patient since it conveys respect, approval and being thoughtful of their difficulty assisting them to get back to full health quickly.

These eight weeks have so far helped me to develop reflective tools to explain why I behave and act in groups in some ways, and the way this behavior can affect people in those groups. I can now not only discover the weaker areas in me, which I will constantly need to be aware of, but also am in a position to see the strengths I can offer to add value to my interaction in groups, and assist to develop myself in my professional practice.