Personal Narrative: My Clinical Experience As A Community Health Nurse

Description of Event During one of my first weeks of clinical placement at The George Hull Centre, I experienced a significant situation which required me to reflect on my practice as a community health nurse. To begin, this situation started when I noticed a mother having difficulty calming down her crying child. After seeing this, I decided to go over and determine why the child was hysterical, When I kneeled down beside the screaming child, I asked in a calm voice “what is going on buddy, why the tears?” After saying this, the mother responded that her son is upset about sharing his toys. Once I heard this, I tried redirecting the child’s attention to another activity to calm him down, a technique I learned from my positive discipline

22). A specific role under this standard is to identify and work proactively to address nursing issues that may affect an individual, family and/or community (Community Health Nurse of Canada, 2011, pg.22). This means that it is important for a community health nurse to be self-directed in their learning in order to be prepared for when troubling situations with a client arises. Self-directed refers to the process an individual takes, with or without assistance, to develop learning goals, identify resources for learning and then implementing learning strategies (Kim & Park, 2011). However, during the first few weeks at my community placement at The George Hull Centre, I felt that I lacked self-direction. I believe that this is as a result of being in a different nursing setting in which I was adjusting to new expectations and requirements. As well, Slater & Cusik (2017) mention that when nursing students lack specific guidelines it can be expected to negatively affect their self-direction (Slater & Cusik, 2017). Perhaps, since I was placed at Ontario Early Years Centre working alongside with early childhood educators, I did not have guidance from a nurse, which may have posed as a barrier to my self-direction when first beginning. Moreover, another community health nursing standard, which

Thus, prior to this situation, what I could have done to avoid feeling uncertain and unprofessional, was to ensure that I was knowledgeable about the Centre’s resources and services ahead of time. This would have been proactive, instead of waiting until a time client is asking for help, to become informed. Thus, in the future what I will do differently is when I first begin my clinical placement to arrive prepared knowing my expectations and ask questions to my preceptor and other employees regarding the placement’s resources and services. As well, I can ask my preceptor about situations that previous nursing students have encountered and how they handled those