Scenario With Depressed Patient

Introduction

The reflective account helps a writer to examine their own experiences to identify the strength and weakness along with the changes to be made in future for effective accomplishment of the goal. In this reflective account, the interaction between me as a health practitioner and my partner as a patient suffering from depression is to be informed for analysing one-to-one working skills in the 5min role-play along with strength and weakness faced by me in during the role play.

Explanation of Scenario

In the given scenario, I had to play the role of a health practitioner who had the duty to interact with the patient to understand the reason behind their mental disorder to offer them proper care. I am going to interact with my partner who is playing the role of a patient named W suffering from depression for the past three months to identify the reason behind his ill mental state. During my interaction with the patient played by my partner, I communicated with him in an attentive and compassionate manner. However, the patient avoided responding many of my questions which made me unable to identify the key reason of his depressed state.

Analysis and Reflection

Experience: In the experiment stage, the scenario of the situation experienced by the individuals is explained (DeCoux, 2016). During my interaction with the patient, I communicated to him by showing attention and compassion but when he refused to answer many of my questions I became irritated. As per the patient, he was seen to be initially cooperating to answer my questions but on asking questions regarding his personal life he refused to answer. This made me irritated as the answers regarding his personal life was important for his diagnosis. Moreover, he avoided to further communicate when I showed irritating behaviour.

Reflect: In the reflect stage, the experience of the individual is reviewed (Tanaka et al. 2018). Thus, according to scenario presented in the role play, it can be reviewed that asking personal question about W's life may have hurt his emotions or made him uncomfortable to share information as he feels his privacy is being hindered by me. Moreover, on reviewing the situation I observed that my change in behaviour led W to show avoidance to answer my questions. This is because till I communicated to him in a polite manner he responded properly. However, with my change in the attitude of being irritated he avoided for further communication.

Conceptualise: In the conceptual stage, ideas are developed for the experience (Outlaw and Rushing, 2018). As asserted by Hastings et al. (2015), individuals suffering from depression are to be communicated in a polite manner and the health practitioners require being patient and compassionate in nature. This is because depressed individuals avoid interacting with individuals showing intolerance to their situation as they feel they are being neglected and disrespected by being a burden of care. Thus, I developed the idea that I need to be more patient in nature and require to avoid showing irritated behaviour when the patients avoid interacting with me. I also developed the idea that I need to make the patient be assured their personal information are kept secret while asking them personal questions.

Plan: In this stage, the ideas developed are planned regarding the way they are to be implemented (Morgan, 2017). I develop the plan that in future while interacting with patients suffering from depression I am going to be more patient, polite and compassionate in nature. Moreover, I would assure them their personal and general information is being kept secret so that they feel safe and secured to communicate with me to effectively answer my question for proper diagnosis of their health.

The Data Protection Act 1998 informs that the data regarding individuals are to be properly stored and not to be used publicly without their permission (www.legislation.gov.uk, 1998). According to this Act, the ethical principle that came into play was that the data informed by the patient is to be kept secret and privately stored and not to be used without his prior permission. Moreover, anonymity of the patient is to be ensured so that his identity is protected from the public. Thus, I used the patient's initials to information about him in the reflection.

The strength of the situation is that I acted in an attentive and compassionate manner. As mentioned by Gunasekara et al. (2014), acting in a compassionate manner makes the mentally ill individuals feel supported. This is because the concerning behaviour through compassion makes them feel the other individuals thoroughly understand their mental state. Moreover, being attentive to mentally-ill patients makes them feel valued and dignified as they often suffer neglect due to their disturbed mental state which hinders their dignity in the society (Neff and Dahm, 2015). Thus, the compassionate and attentive behaviour was beneficial to establish communication with the patient named W by making him feel dignified and valued.

The irritated or annoyed behaviour makes mentally-ill people upset and intimidated (Yang and Mak, 2017). This is because the annoying behaviour is an unpleasant emotion for mentally-ill people that makes them think to be burden of care or lack of value or dignity. Thus, the irritating behaviour was my weakness in the scenario as it may have led W to feel lack of value and dignity as a result of which he avoided to communicate any further. Moreover, the lack of assurance of privacy regarding personal information was a potential weakness in the scenario because it may have led W to feel unsafe in answering the personal question being asked.

Conclusion

The above discussion informs that I have played the role of a health practitioner who had the duty to evaluate the reason behind the depression of the patient played by my partner for providing the patient proper care. In the scenario, the key weakness was irritated behaviour and lack of assurance of privacy to the patient.

References

• DeCoux, V.M., 2016. Kolb's learning style inventory: A review of its applications in nursing research. Journal of Nursing Education, 29(5), pp.202-207.
• Gunasekara, I., Pentland, T., Rodgers, T. and Patterson, S., 2014. What makes an excellent mental health nurse? A pragmatic inquiry initiated and conducted by people with lived experience of service use. International Journal of Mental Health Nursing, 23(2), pp.101-109.
• Hastings, J.F., Jones, L.V. and Martin, P.P., 2015. African Americans and depression: Signs, awareness, treatments, and interventions. NewYork: Rowman & Littlefield.
• Husebø, S.E., O'Regan, S. and Nestel, D., 2015. Reflective practice and its role in simulation. Clinical Simulation in Nursing, 11(8), pp.368-375.
• Jacob, J.M., 2017. Doctors and rules: a sociology of professional values. London: Routledge.
• Mellor, D., Davison, T., McCabe, M. and George, K., 2008. Professional carers’ knowledge and response to depression among their aged-care clients: the care recipients’ perspective. Aging and Mental Health, 12(3), pp.389-399.
• Morgan, S., 2017. Developing trainee advanced nurse practitioners in clinical environments. Nursing Management (2014+), 23(9), p.29.
• Neff, K.D. and Dahm, K.A., 2015. Self-compassion: What it is, what it does, and how it relates to mindfulness. In Handbook of mindfulness and self-regulation (pp. 121-137). Springer, New York, NY.
• Outlaw, K. and Rushing, D.S., 2018. Increasing Empathy in Mental Health Nursing Using Simulation and Reflective Journaling. Journal of Nursing Education, 57(12), pp.766-766.
• Tanaka, M., Okamoto, R. and Koide, K., 2018. Relationship between Reflective Practice Skills and Volume of Writing in a Reflective Journal. Health, 10(03), p.283.
• www.legislation.gov.uk 1998, Data Protection Act 1998, Available at:
• Yang, X. and Mak, W.W., 2017. The differential moderating roles of self-compassion and mindfulness in self-stigma and well-being among people living with mental illness or HIV. Mindfulness, 8(3), pp.595-602.

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