Nursing 311 Course: Patient-centered Care
Final E-portfolio Essay
Fall 2013
According to the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Competencies, there are a list of pre-licensure knowledge, skills and attitudes that nurses should be aware of and competent in (Themes, 2013). These knowledge, skills and attitudes help the nurse perform better healthcare and eventually can lead to greater outcomes of health in the future. I chose the patient-centered care skill to “provide patient-centered care with sensitivity and respect for the diversity of human experience” (Themes, 2013). I feel I am extremely competent in this skill, although I will always be learning new knowledge on diversity.
I believe that the past two and a half years of clinical experience in various hospitals have made me grow into a student nurse that respects all types of cultures, attitudes, and the diversity of populations. My personal value is to treat everyone as I would my family. I believe that everyone deserves the same treatment no matter how different they are from my own beliefs. I feel very comfortable with my own values and am able to put them aside when someone else is in need of a different prioritization of values. I want to do my best to treat the patient as a whole person. Everyone goes through different experiences and has various views of certain aspects of healthcare. By being sensitive, respectful, and appreciative of others morals, I am able to provide the best quality of care for that person to become as healthy as possible. My clinical experiences have taught me that every human being is different and it does not matter if they have the same diagnosis, medications, or lab results; I am going to treat the patient in an individualistic manner pertaining to their needs. For example, there can be two people with the same diagnosis, but one patient might differ from the other in areas of financial resources, religion, family matters, location of living, quality of life, other co-morbidities, history, cultural beliefs and values, personality, and other aspects of a person that cause us to be unique from each other.
Other than my clinical experiences, the Nursing 311 course learning activities have also helped me gain insight to the differences in everyone’s experience. We have had multiple blogs and readings that pertain to culture. In one of my blogs I wrote about how a patient with a different culture, other than mine, who used cultural remedies instead of the prescribed medications. He did not understand or have adequate knowledge about his diagnosis or his medication and used the most common home remedies of his cultural ways to prevent his unpreventable lifelong diagnosis. With this experience, I was able to reflect on this patient and if the care that he was receiving would be beneficial for him. I was able to find out more on his cultural remedies and tell other health care providers about them so that they would treat this patient based off of his beliefs, which made him more comfortable and compliant. From one of the readings in Chapter six of First do less harm: Confronting the inconvenient problems of patient safety, there was a quote that really stood out about patient centered care and experiences stating “patient safety, like any other cultural transformation, involves changing attitudes and not just changing behaviors” (Gordon, Lazes, & Samy, 2012). This is true because in order to gain respect for different experiences of human beings and focus on patient centered care, one must be willing to change their way of thinking and attitude that allows genuine meaning to the behavior they are performing to accomplish the patient centered care skill.
References
Gordon, S., Lazes, P., & Samy, S. (2012). Excluded actors in patient safety. In S. Gordon, & R.
Koppel. (Eds.), First do less harm: Confronting the inconvenient problems of patient
safety (pp. 102). Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press.
Themes, E. (2013). Pre-licensure KSAS. QSEN Institute. Retrieved from http://qsen.org/
competencies/pre-licensure-ksas/
NURS306 Week 4 Reflection 9-23-12
Pragmatists see problems as a chance to begin a different pathway into a fresh direction. Pragmatists believe chronic issues does not mean doomed for life. Pragmatists believe chronic illness can be dealt with appropriately. I concur with the pragmatist view that chronic illness does not mean the end of their life. One has to co-manage the disease, listen to the patient and remember the individual is unique. Chronic illness has stigma and isolation. Stigma can be very hard to handle, but as a pragmatist isolation is not the answer. The answer would be trying to feel as comfortable as one can in their own skin. Stigma is a very powerful, but I also feel being confident and feeling secure in your own body, with the necessary resources, can help someone overcome stigma/isolation. Chronic care brings changes in body image. Pragmatists are flexible and adjust easily to change. I agree that if body image is an issue, one needs to have support and the will to want to change for the better, both mentally and physically. It will take time and effort, but it can be accomplished. Uncertainty plays a major factor in chronic illness Unpredictability is scary. Pragmatists think practically and believe reality is experience. The future is filled with unknown knowledge. I see like a pragmatist in dealing with problems as they come, believing a way around the issue and choosing the best outcome for the fullest potential of your own personal life.
Lavinia Dock Blog:
Dock was a very intelligent and inspiring woman. She wanted the best for everyone and not just the majority of people in society. She tried to focus on the poor or lower class as well. Her strength for patient centered care was respect and honest caring for each individual, especially her feminist ideas. Dock centered her care on each person in a way that she would want to be treated as well. She changed many patients’ lives as a nurse by improving living conditions and controlling the dirty conditions of the work environment. Dock did not have a weakness on this topic, other than not having the information today to prevent diseases. Dock wanted social justice for everyone. She was very caring and her attitude towards patient centered care was fair. It did not matter who you were, what color your skin was, how old you were. She had a lifestyle that did not judge a book by its cover and interacted with anyone that came her way.
PICTURE CREDIT: http://www.wtionline.cc/patient_care.htm
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