Paper instructions:
This Guide for Reflection is intended to help you think about a clinical situation you have encountered during this past week and your response to that situation.
The situation can be:
• A specific physiological patient problem, such as an elevation in temperature, respiratory difficulty, or electrolyte imbalance.
• You may choose to describe a situation involving a patient’s family. The situation can be a description of your role in interdisciplinary problem solving.
• The reflection situation may describe an ethical issue you encountered in practice.
Use this guide for reflection as a way to help you tell the story of the situation you encountered.
The guide provides you with a way of thinking about care that supports the development of your clinical judgment. Although there are many ways of organizing your thinking about patient care and professional nursing practice. Tanner’s (2006) Clinical Judgment Model provides the framework for the questions in this study guide.
Introduction
• Describe a nursing situation you encountered this week. (See the instructions above.)
Background
• Consider experiences that you have had that helped you provide nursing care in this situation. Describe your formal knowledge (e.g. physiology, psychology, communication skills) and/or previous nursing experience with a similar problem.
• Describe your beliefs about your role as the nurse working on the situation.
• Describe any emotions you had about the situation.
Noticing
• What did you notice about the situation initially?
• Describe what you noticed as you spent more time with the patient and/or family.
Interpreting
• Describe what you thought about the situation (e.g., its cause, potential resolutions, patterns you noticed).
• What other information (e.g., assessment data, evidence) did you decide you needed as you considered the situation? How did you obtain this information?
• What did your observations and data interpretation lead you to believe? How did they support your response, or interventions you did?
