Students are required to maintain weekly reflective narratives throughout the course
Students are required to maintain weekly reflective narratives throughout the course to combine into one course-long reflective journal that integrates leadership and inquiry into current practice as it applies to the Professional Capstone and Practicum course.
In your journal, you will reflect on the personal knowledge and skills gained throughout this course. The journal should address a variable combination of the following, depending on your specific practice immersion clinical experiences:
- New practice approaches
- Intraprofessional collaboration
- Health care delivery and clinical systems
- Ethical considerations in health care
- Population health concerns
- The role of technology in improving health care outcomes
- Health policy
- Leadership and economic models
- Health disparities
Students will outline what they have discovered about their professional practice, personal strengths and weaknesses that surfaced, additional resources and abilities that could be introduced to a given situation to influence optimal outcomes, and finally, how the student met the competencies aligned to this course.
While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, located in the Student Success Center.
This assignment uses a rubric. Please review the rubric prior to beginning the assignment to become familiar with the expectations for successful completion.
Expert Answer and Explanation
Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal
- New Practice Approaches
I am excited and nervous this week. Class started on the 24th May and I was still abroad because my return flight was canceled. I made it to the states three days after class started. I went right to work by reviewing class work and assignments due on week 1. I quickly realized that in this course student needed to plan early. I was overwhelmed the few days of class. I contacted my preceptor to check if she received an email from GCU to set up her thunder time account. She was very busy that day and was unable to check it. The following day, I met with her to facilitate setting up her account. She was successful.
I started reading announcements, expectations and course requirements. By this time things starts to make sense. I then started working on assignments. On the other hand, planning to fulfil my 10 hours of clinical time for the week. I called my preceptor to know her availability on when she is going out to visit patients and my plan on how we can move forward in the course since its time consuming.
Few clinical hours were done with preceptor, community and leadership.
- Interprofessional Collaboration
Interprofessional collaboration is working with other professionals to accomplish the same goals. In nursing, interprofessional collaboration can be described as a situation where nurses work together with physicians, laboratory specialists, and other specialists to improve the health of a patient under their care (Reeves et al.
, 2017). Interprofessional collaboration can ensure that patients receive quality and safe care because many qualified and experienced persons are working to ensure that they gain healthy status.
Interprofessional collaboration can also reduce medical errors because it might promote healthy and effective communication between professionals working together (Tang et al., 2018). I have learned a lot about interprofessional collaboration in this week’s lesson. One of the things I have learned is that interprofessional collaboration cannot be achieved without effective and proper communication strategies.
Communication is everything in interprofessional collaboration. Another thing I have learned is that for one to collaborate successfully with other professionals, one must be able to work in a team.
- Health Care Delivery and Clinical Systems
A Healthcare delivery system can be defined as a collection of resources, institutions, and individuals to provide care services with the aim of meeting the target population. I have learned from this course that healthcare delivery has changed a lot. Most of the care delivery services are done using technologies.
For instance, a preventive care service, such as the one focused on in this course can be delivered using technologies, such as social media and mass media tools, such as television.
I have also realized that healthcare delivery in the current US health system is based on quality and not quantity. Healthcare delivery is currently done using a model known as a value-based model where nurses and other healthcare professionals are paid based on the quality of care they have provided and not the quantity (Putera, 2017).
Another thing I have learned is that preventive measures, such as this capstone project can lower the cost of health care delivery by preventing readmissions and other factors increasing the cost of health.
- Ethical Considerations in Health Care
Like any other sector, healthcare industry is also guided by various ethical considerations. My capstone project will be based on many ethical considerations. One of them is informed consent. The project will involve educating geriatric patients about proper handwashing techniques. Hence, the patients should give their consent before being included in the project.
My role in this situation is explaining to the participants the purpose of this projects, how the results will be used, and who will view their private information. The information will help the participants make informed decision regarding the project they want to join. Another ethical consideration that will be included in the project is justice.
Adashi et al. (2018) note that justice is one of the ethical principles in Belmont report. According to the authors, researchers should ensure that they observe equality when handling participants and including them in their report.
- Practices of Culturally Sensitive Care
The US is one of the countries expanding rapidly in terms of culture. Dyble (2018) notes that more than 37% of the American population come from the minority racial groups. Nurses are therefore needed to remain as culturally sensitive as possible to provide just and equal care to all patients regardless of their ethnic groups.
As a nursing project, this capstone activity should also remain as cultural as possible so that it can be used in divergent groups to improve their health status.
Culturally sensitive care can be achieved through many ways. One of the ways in awareness. Nurses are supposed to be aware of the cultures in their area of practice to prevent them from making assumptions about people they have never met (Attum et al., 2020). Another practice is learning more about other cultures to improve one’s knowledge about cultural competence care.
The last practice is building rapport and trust with patients so that one can understand them better.
- Ensuring The Integrity of Human Dignity in The Care of All Patients
Nurses should ensure that they maintain human dignity while providing care. One of the ways to ensure human dignity when providing all patients care is communicating effectively. Communication is a vital tool in care provision (Macaden et al., 2017). Patients can feel respected and treated with dignity when the nurses talk to them in a friendly and non-abusive language.
Second, nurses should respect the choices of patients and understand that patients are the ones who control their individual health (Macaden et al., 2017). For instance, while working with elderly patients, nurses should involve them in decision-making by asking them what they want to wear. Nurses can also maintain individuality by giving patients choices between injections or tables.
Hygiene is a vital part of human dignity (Macaden et al., 2017). Nurses should promote human dignity in their working environment by ensuring that nursing wards and general hospital settings are clean and safe for humans.
- Population Health Concerns
The population being targeted in this project are geriatric patients. Hospital-acquired infections, such as C diff. are one of the health concerns among older adults. Another health concern is fall. According to the World Health Organization, fall is among the health problems facing older people. The organization report that over 600 thousand older people die from falls or fall-related complications every year.
The organization also reports that over 37 million older people often get hospitalized due to fall-related injuries (WHO, n.db). Type two diabetes is also another health concern among older adults.
The WHO also notes that type two diabetes is one of the chronic conditions impacting older people aged 65 and above (WHO, n.da). This disease is higher in older people because of their sedentary life. Obesity is also another health concern among older people. As people age, their physical activity deteriorates, as a result, risk suffering obesity.
- The Role of Technology in Improving Health Care Outcomes
Technology has been significant in all sectors including healthcare. One of the known roles of technology in improving healthcare outcomes is storing, sharing, and analyzing health data. Initially, healthcare providers had a difficult time recording patients’ data manually and store them. The process even became tiresome when they were needed to retrieve past patient data and use it to improve their health.
Traditional ways of storing data also increased the cost of data management as the records would take a huge place within the facility.
However, the technology has made work easier as nurses can now store data in their computers and find them easily when the need arises. Another role of technology in healthcare is improving communication between patients and healthcare providers (Mirzaei & Kashian, 2020). Currently, through technology, healthcare professionals and patients can get in touch and discuss various issues regarding the patient’s health without the patient necessarily going to the hospital.
- Health Policy
I have learned from this course that nurses should be fully involved in the development of health policy. nurses are significant in this regard because they are the ones who often interact with patients on a daily basis, hence understand what the patients are passing through and things that should be improved in the nursing sector to promote quality and safe care.
Nurses can get involved in policy development at the federal, local, or state levels by joining a professional organization, such as the American Nurses Organization (Hitziger et al., 2018).
Through the organizations, nurses can lobby and bring issues to Capitol Hill for discussion. They can also be involved by writing to their local representatives. One of the health policies that have changed the healthcare system of the US is the Affordable Care Act. This health policy gave rise to a health delivery model known as a value-based system, a system that has ensured quality care.
- Leadership and Economic Models
Leadership is a critical aspect of nursing care. Nurses need leadership qualities to provide ethical, quality, and safe care. One of the leadership models needed in nursing is democratic leadership. This type of leadership allows nurse leaders to give their staff the democracy to make certain decisions (Allen-Handy et al.
, 2020). Another leadership model is transformative leadership.
These types of leaders are always transformative and aspire for innovations. One of the economic models practiced by nurses is an economic theory. This model is based on the assumption that that the primary element that motivates people is happiness (Jones & Yoder, 2010). In other words, all people do things so that they can be happy.
The goal of the theory is to help people make the best choices regarding resource allocation to achieve happiness (Jones & Yoder, 2010). This model is also used in nursing to make choices about how to allocate resources during patient care.
- Health Disparities
Nurses should understand their patients and community for them to provide just and equitable care. This week, I learned a lot about health disparities in the US health system. One of the health disparities is ethnicity or race. According to Sohn (2017), African American people are underinsured and the high cost of health prevents them from accessing quality and safe care.
Other races who are underinsured in the US are Asians and AIAN people.
Another health disparity in the US is age. Older people risk developing many health problems compared to people of other races (Sohn., 2017) Older people risk developing diabetes, high blood pressure, and other heart diseases. Older people also risk experiencing falls. Another health disparity is education.
Health literacy can prevent patients from improving their health. Poor health literacy is higher among African Americans compared to whites.
References
Adashi, E. Y., Walters, L. B., & Menikoff, J. A. (2018). The Belmont report at 40: Reckoning with time. American Journal of Public Health, 108(10), 1345-1348. https://ajph.aphapublications.org/doi/abs/10.2105/AJPH.2018.304580
Allen-Handy, A., Thomas-El, S. L., & Sung, K. K. (2020). Urban Youth Scholars: Cultivating Critical Global Leadership Development through Youth-Led Justice-Oriented Research. The Urban review, 1–31. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11256-020-00568-w
Attum, B., Hafiz, S., Malik, A., & Shamoon, Z. (2020). Cultural Competence in the Care of Muslim Patients and Their Families. In StatPearls. StatPearls Publishing.
Dyble, M. (2018). The effect of dispersal on rates of cumulative cultural evolution. Biology letters, 14(2), 20180069. https://royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/abs/10.1098/rsbl.2018.0069
Hitziger, M., Esposito, R., Canali, M., Aragrande, M., Häsler, B., & Rüegg, S. R. (2018). Knowledge integration in One Health policy formulation, implementation and evaluation. Bulletin of the World Health Organization, 96(3), 211–218. https://doi.org/10.2471/BLT.17.202705
Jones, T. L., & Yoder, L. (2010). Economic theory and nursing administration research–is this a good combination?. Nursing forum, 45(1), 40–53. https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1744-6198.2009.00160.x
Macaden, L., Kyle, R. G., Medford, W., Blundell, J., Munoz, S. A., & Webster, E. (2017). Student nurses’ perceptions of dignity in the care of older people. British Journal of Nursing, 26(5), 274-280. https://www.magonlinelibrary.com/doi/abs/10.12968/bjon.2017.26.5.274
Mirzaei, T., & Kashian, N. (2020). Revisiting effective communication between patients and physicians: cross-sectional questionnaire study comparing text-based electronic versus face-to-face communication. Journal of medical Internet Research, 22(5), e16965. https://preprints.jmir.org/preprint/16965
Putera I. (2017). Redefining Health: Implication for Value-Based Healthcare Reform. Cureus, 9(3), e1067. https://doi.org/10.7759/cureus.1067
Reeves, S., Pelone, F., Harrison, R., Goldman, J., & Zwarenstein, M. (2017). Interprofessional collaboration to improve professional practice and healthcare outcomes. Cochrane Database of Systematic Reviews, (6). https://doi.org/10.1002/14651858.CD000072.pub3
Sohn H. (2017). Racial and Ethnic Disparities in Health Insurance Coverage: Dynamics of Gaining and Losing Coverage over the Life-Course. Population research and policy review, 36(2), 181–201. https://doi.org/10.1007/s11113-016-9416-y
Tang, C. J., Zhou, W. T., Chan, S. W. C., & Liaw, S. Y. (2018). Interprofessional collaboration between junior doctors and nurses in the general ward setting: A qualitative exploratory study. Journal of nursing management, 26(1), 11-18. https://doi.org/10.1111/jonm.12503
WHO. (n.da). Diabetes. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/diabetes
WHO. (n.db). Falls. https://www.who.int/news-room/fact-sheets/detail/falls
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RUBRIC:
New Practice Approaches
New practice approaches are present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Intraprofessional Collaboration (4.3)
Intraprofessional collaboration information is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Health Care Delivery And Clinical Systems (4.1)
Health care delivery and clinical systems information is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Ethical Considerations In Health Care (5.4)
Ethical considerations in health care information is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Population Health Concerns (5.3)
Population health concerns information is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
The Role Of Technology In Improving Health Care Outcomes (4.3)
Information on the role of technology in improving health care outcomes is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Health Policy
Health policy information content is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Leadership And Economic Models
Information on leadership and economic models is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Health Disparities (1.5)
Information on health disparities is present, complete, and incorporates additional relevant details and critical thinking to engage the reader.
Presentation
The work is well presented and includes all required elements. The overall appearance is neat and professional.
Mechanics of Writing (includes spelling, punctuation, grammar, language use)
Writer is clearly in command of standard, written, academic English.
