Understanding Ourselves, Appreciating Difference

Understanding Ourselves, Appreciating Difference

Football is something that represents me. it has high significance to my life that empowers me to maintain proper work life balance. I play football for many years that keeps me healthy both physically and mentally. My friends and myself have played many tournaments together which are one of the best ways to reduce the professional as well as personal stress. Being a healthcare staff it’s not all-time possible for me to maintain perfect work life balance. In that case, football is sometimes that always encourages me to put my best effort in maintaining the work life balance by throwing all the stress out of my mind. as mentioned by Passarelli (2010), outdoor activities that represent people’s strength always are associated with their empowerment in certain ways in terms of keeping them mentally and emotionally strong.

In every week my friends and myself play tournament that is organised by our club. these tournaments not only make me feel good both physically and mentally, but also improve my professional skills that I can apply in my workplace to provide better services to services users. I practice regularly in the club ground with my friends that makes me learnt new things such as how to work in teams, ways of coping up with different team conflict and how to make effective interaction with team members to get fruitful results. While I play different competitive matches, I learn how to work in stressful situation with holding patience and keeping mind cool. During the rest times I discus with friends about the win strategies that enhances my creativity to develop innovative strategies and decision while working with patients. During football matches I have learnt to made different friends, enjoyed the moment of winning matches, shared my decision as well as views with others and coped with the defeat against the odd one. all these experiences improve my critical thinking skill, adaptability, decision making skill and problem-solving capacity that I can apply in my workplace to improve my rapport with colleagues and patients that enhance the proficiency of my service delivery process.

Professional and personal identity:

Guitar is the object that is meaningful to my identity as a health care professional. Playing guitar is something that makes me feel good by removing all the negative and pessimistic thought from my mind. as mentioned by Gertsog et al. (2017), people need to find an object that can assists them to represent their identity, such as who they are and why there are working in this profession. While I plug in my guitar, play it and listen to the music it not only makes me feel empowered but also works as a motivator to my positive thoughts, creative ideas and strong emotions. This positive thought is highly important for me as a health professional to keep me optimistic throughout working session even in critical condition. I have played guitar for many years which is one of the important parts of my life that makes me enable to maintain strong connection with my mind and body. being a healthcare professional, I need strong mental strength to deal with different critical case. this strength I literally get from my guitar. Playing guitar is something that activates my nerves and brain to develop new as well as fruitful thoughts that can be effective not only for me but also for people around me. I prefer to play gutter in front of my family members and friends as this makes me able to spend my quality time with them by discussing good memories and issue. Playing guitar with my friends make me understand the importance of decision sharing and team work process that I can apply in my workplace. additionally, through playing different tunes in guitar I always try to understand my mind as well as decision, that improves my critical thinking skill, analysing skill and judgmental skill that improve my proficiency in analysing patients’ situation and taking right decision for their health and wellbeing.

Human experience

Based on my perspective, ‘a life well-lived’ means the life that makes me feel good and happy. The life that makes me self-confident, humble, decent and comfortable. There ar many schools of thoughts regrading ‘a life well-lived’. As mentioned by Hussain (2020), ‘a life well-lived’ is that which brings about new opportunities to people and helps them to find out their strength and limitations. I always believe that, a well-lived life will improve strength to determine my capabilities, faults and limitation. With determination these strength and weakness I can improve my personal and professional skill that assist me to not only have a good future career but also have well-managed personal life. I think a well lived life is that which makes me satisfied with what I have and provide me with opportunities to achieve something that I want such as good career, good relation and true friendship. As stated by Clark (2017), ‘a life well-lived’ can be considered as the life that provides people with proper opportunities in developing their skills, experiences and knowledge to be better human being. Therefore, I believe that a well-lived life assists me to gain in-depth understanding about my surrounding world that would assist me to make strong social connection. additionality the well-lived life empowers me to accept all my defeat, sorrow, bereavement and sadness.

I believed that ‘a life well-lived’ means I have better understanding about myself that who I am, what are my positive strengths and what are my negative sides. I think, to have a well lived life I need to focus on developing physical, mental and emotional wellbeing that will assist me not only in developing fresh as well as positive thoughts but also improve my analysing and critical thinking power. I also believe that a well-lived life is that which will assist me to take positive aspects from negative situation and maintain the regular flow of my life by introducing optimistic viewpoint into it.

Responding to difference:

Being a health professional, I have to respond to many critical situations in which I used my empathy, soft feeling and in-depth nursing knowledge to deal with these situations. In my professional life I have responded to many critical situations. In case study 1, the problem is that the way the practice nurse uses while talking to Naomi about her personal life was so unprofessional that it lacks any empathy towards the service user (Naomi). The other issue is that the unprofessional as well as rude approach that the practice nurse uses after listening that Naomi and her husband plan for a second baby. Under the NMC guidelines, register nurse needs to use polite, empathetic and supportive attitude while talking to any post-partum woman (Alvarez et al. 2018). In this case, the Codes of Conducts I will use are respect the privacy and interest of Naomi, treat her with dignity and respect and use supportive as well as empathetic approach while interacting with her. Being a registered nurse, I will make an empathetic and polite interaction with Naomi regarding the health issues that can arise if she conceives a second baby in this post-partum period as her abdominal muscles are still not heeled properly. Additionally, I would make supportive and caring approach towards Naomi to make her understand how a woman can be vulnerable to life risk during delivery if she gets pregnant within 8-10 months after delivering first baby. In addition to this I would respect the decision and preference of Naomi and would not pose any force or would not show any kind of abusive approach towards her. I would conduct a counselling for her as well as her husband in which I would inform them about all the clinical guidelines that a post-partum mother needs to follow to stay heathy and make her baby healthy.

Independent learning:

While looking at the picture on the canvas I can see a woman with black skin and dark hair. The entire portrait is formed by using dark brown colour which is filled with many dark circles. The women in the painting has blue eye shadow, sting of brown colour beads and red lipstick. She wears a black necklace with a large pendant. There is a vibrant red area in woman’s chest that flames like yellow-orange forks. The woman is crying and inside every drop of her tear there is a picture of a teenage boy. While I research on the picture to get the actual story behind it, I come to know that, the crying woman in the profile is Doren Lawrence. Stephan Lawrence was her son who was died in a racist attack in London when he was a teenage boy. The photograph that is shown in every drop of tears of Doren is of Stephan. Through this picture painter wanted to express the hidden grief of a mother who lost her son at younger age. The flame inside the chest area of woman in the picture represents how the woman, Doren Lawrence became stronger day-by-day by dealing with her bereavement and grief. Her grief and sorrow made her stronger physically and mentally. By analysing the story behind the picture, I have learnt how loss and grief can empower a person both physically and spiritually that assist him or her to deal any critical situation. This lesion will assist me to make proper control on my emotion and sorrow while working with patients. My evaluation regarding the picture of crying lady teaches me that as a practice nurse I should not be scared of facing the unexpected and sad situation rather I need to confront them with confidence that will make me strong both emotionally and physically.

Thinking like a professional nurse

The overall experience that I gather during last year as a professional nurse was full of good and bad situations, that assisted me to learn new things. One of the good experiences I had during the last year as professional nurse was my interaction and communication with my colleagues, health staffs, health professionals and patients. This interaction improved my spoken English skill, verbal and written communication skill. As mentioned by Fitzpatrick (2017), good communication skill is importance for professional nurse to make clear interaction with patients and other health professionals. Another good experience was teamwork, that assisted me to learn new things from my team members such as how to manage conflict in team, how to deal with critical needs of patients and what strategies need to be taken while dealing with vulnerable patients. Partnership working with patients and their family members was another good experience that I gained during the last year. Throughout the partnership working process I had learnt how to inform family members of patients regarding their deteriorating health status. additionally, the partnership working process also assisted me to gain better understanding about patient’s preference, pre-medical history, their behaviour and needs.

One of the bad experiences that I gained during the last year is my conflict with my colleagues regarding keeping as well as managing the records of patient case study. I found out that the practice nurse who were in my team were not sincere to their work while collecting data of patient’s health status and their ongoing treatment process. Another bad experience was sometimes I had to take stubborn decision by avoiding patients’ interest and preference as their preferences can make them vulnerable towards health risk. this leads to spoil the healthy and friendly relation with these patients that hurt me a lot. Another bad experience is that sometimes despite knowing that some health professionals use patients as a business element to raise their money, I had to shut my mouth to keep my job secure.

Reference list:

Alvarez, C., Debnam, K., Clough, A., Alexander, K. and Glass, N.E., 2018. Responding to intimate partner violence: Healthcare providers' current practices and views on integrating a safety decision aid into primary care settings. Research in nursing & health, 41(2), pp.145-155.

Bellgrove, A., 2017. A life well lived: Joanna Jones (Kain) 1930–2017. Journal of Applied Phycology, 29(6), pp.2707-2711.

Clark, C.M., 2017. A Life Well Lived: A Tribute to Dr Kathleen T. Heinrich. Nurse Educator, 42(3), p.109.

Fitzpatrick, J.J., 2017. Thinking Like a Nurse, Revisited. Nursing education perspectives, 38(4), p.170.

Gertsog, G.A., Danilova, V.V., Savchenkov, A.V. and Korneev, D.N., 2017. Professional identity for successful adaptation of students-a participative approach. Rupkatha Journal on Interdisciplinary Studies in Humanities, 9(1), pp.301-311.

Hussain, S.A., 2020. Dr. Jyotsna Murthy: A Life Well Lived. Indian journal of plastic surgery: official publication of the Association of Plastic Surgeons of India, 53(1), p.12.

Passarelli, A., Hall, E. and Anderson, M., 2010. A strengths-based approach to outdoor and adventure education: Possibilities for personal growth. Journal of Experiential Education, 33(2), pp.120-135.

Plachkinova, M., Vo, A., Hilton, B. and Bhaskar, R., 2018. Response to Delamater’s Comment on “A Conceptual Framework for Quality Healthcare Accessibility: A Scalable Approach for Big Data Technologies”. Information Systems Frontiers, 20(2), pp.311-314.

Rodriguez, V.L., 2017. A Life Well Lived.

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