NR501 Week 2 Reflective Assignment Carper Pattern of Knowing Reflective Essay

NR501 Week 2 Reflective Assignment Carper Pattern of Knowing Reflective Essay

Fundamental Nursing Lessons Learnt from a Difficult Situation in Practice: Carper’s Pattern’s of Knowing in Nursing.

The Practical Situation Experienced

Nursing is about promoting health, preventing illness, and restoring hope. However, there are situations in which a nurse can find themselves almost helpless with regard to all the three above. A case in point is the prospect of having to reassure a patient with terminal illness by giving them hope yet you know very well that they may not have long to live.

Even more daunting is the task requiring you as the nurse to convince the patient and her relatives that they will benefit from hospice care. This is the situation I once found myself in. I was faced with this situation of a 37 year-old who had advanced ovarian cancer with a very poor prognosis. It was obvious that what she needed most in her…

Week 2 Assignment: Reflective Essay

Purpose

Nursing knowledge is classified in a variety of ways, one of which is Carper’s Patterns of Knowing (Carper, 1978).  Carper’s framework offers a lens through which the nurse can reflect upon insights acquired through empirical, ethical, personal, and aesthetic knowledge (Carper, 1978).

Through intentional reflection using Carper’s Patterns of Knowing, nurses can process experiential learning and knowledge acquired through practice.  This assignment aims to reflect upon a specific practice situation and better understand the professional knowledge and insights obtained through that experience.

Course Outcomes on NR501 Week 2 Reflective Assignment

Through this assessment, the student will meet the following Course Outcomes:

• Demonstrate logical and creative thinking in analyzing and applying theory to nursing practice. (CO #1)
• Examine broad theoretical concepts as foundational to advanced nursing practice roles. (CO #3)

Requirements

Criteria for Content

1. Think of a surprising or challenging practice situation in which you felt underprepared, unprepared, or uncomfortable.
2. Select an important nursing issue/topic that was inherent to the identified situation.
3. As a method of refection, use Carper’s Patterns of Knowing to analyze the situation. In a two- to three-page paper address the following:
4. Briefly explain the situation
5. Identify the nursing issue inherent in the identified situation
6. What do you think was the underlying reason for the situation? (Esthetics)
7. What were your thoughts and feeling in the situation? (Personal)
8. What was one personal belief that impacted your actions? (Ethics)
9. What evidence in nursing literature supports the nursing importance of the identified issue? (Empirical)
10. What new insights did you gain through this reflective practice opportunity?

Preparing the paper

1. Application: Use Microsoft Word 2016™ to create the written component of this assessment.
2. Length:
   1. The paper (excluding the title page and reference page) should be at least two but no more than three pages.
3. A minimum of two (2) scholarly literature sources must be used.
4. Submission: Submit your file to the Canvas course site by the due date/time indicated.

Best Practices in Preparing the Reflective Essay

The following are best practices in preparing this reflective essay.

1. Review directions thoroughly.
2. Follow assignment requirements.
3. Make sure all elements on the grading rubric are included.
4. Rules of grammar, spelling, word usage, and punctuation are followed and consistent with formal, scholarly writing.
5. Because the paper is a reflective essay, first person is acceptable for this assignment.
6. Title page, running head, body of paper, and reference page must follow APA guidelines as found in the 6th edition of the manual. This includes the use of headings for each section of the paper except for the introduction where no heading is used.
7. Ideas and information that come from scholarly literature must be cited and referenced correctly.
8. A minimum of two (2) scholarly literature sources must be used.
9. Abide by CCN academic integrity policy.

Example Reflective Assignment on Aboriginal People

As a nurse, my beliefs and attitudes rely massively on my culture because I often apply various socio-cultural principles when delivering patient care. One of the most profound cultural aspects that shape my profession is religion. As a Christian, I have a different worldview regarding diseases and healing. In this sense, I believe that God created humans in his image to enjoy his companionship and favor.

However, human’s sinful nature destroyed their relationship with God. As a result, God punishes human races through diseases and other calamities because they shifted from mainstream guidelines (Choudry et al., 2018). Consequently, the only way to rekindle the lost love and companionship is through repentance and acknowledging Jesus’s role in restoring humankind.

Alongside Christian narratives of creation, fall, redemption, and restoration, my culture requires people to show impartiality, justice, and love to others. Arguably, these ethical guidelines blend well with the principles of evidence-based nursing practices.

In this sense, the evidence-based practice model (EBP) requires healthcare professionals to encourage justice, beneficence, nonmaleficence, and patient autonomy (Lulé et al., 2019). The ability to incorporate my beliefs and attitudes into the nursing profession is fundamental in enhancing my cultural competence to understand other people’s needs without providing biased care.

Cultural competence is crucial for care providers because it helps them understand and integrate cultural intelligence into healthcare delivery operations. Jongen et al. (2018) argue that healthcare professionals must improve cultural competence to serve the needs of a diverse population. On the other hand, Nair and Adetayo (2019) present cultural competence as “the ability to collaborate effectively with individuals from different cultures, and such competence improves healthcare experiences and outcomes.”

I believe that understanding other people’s cultural values and beliefs is the basic step of incorporating social determinants of health in mainstream care delivery. As a result, it is possible to understand factors that affect the underserved populations facing various healthcare concerns because of socio-economic issues, including low-level education, poverty, low income, and discrimination.

My cultural beliefs and attitudes enhance the desire to work with Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander people because I feel that we share core values, including the role of religion in promoting people’s health and wellness. According to Davy et al. (2017), Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities share cultural aspects that validate the synergies between culture, land, community, and family in determining people’s well-being.

In this sense, the definition of health for such native communities extends beyond physical and psychological dimensions (Dew et al., 2019). When considering social institutions that promote people’s interpretation of health and well-being among Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander communities, it is valid to argue that any healthcare intervention should focus on capitalizing on unique connections and social institutions.

As a professional nurse determined to work with vulnerable and underserved populations, I believe that process honesty, respect for diversities, effective communication, and awareness are fundamental factors for understanding social determinants for these communities. Fortunately, my cultural beliefs and values encourage commitment, persistence, humility, and honesty when interacting with people from different cultures.