Professional Nursing Reflection

Professional Reflection

Due to the high relevance of FCC to pediatric nursing, Stollery Children's Hospital's mission and my personal interest, I decided to conduct some research and prepare myself to become a sufficient graduate nurse who can deliver compassionate, competent, individualized family-centered care to my patients. Some of the professional activities that I have implemented during the preceptorship include: (1) determined my weakness regarding FCC and developed a learning plan with series of learning activities in relation to that, (2) identified the implementation of FCC during the surgery and operative services pathway at the Stollery Children's Hospital by having an operation (OR) follow-through, and (3) connected with the

Therefore, I envisioned that it would be crucial to know the proper definition and concepts of FCC before developing strategies and implementing FCC into care practices. After identifying the definitions, I consulted my preceptor, the unit manager and the clinical nursing educator to identify strategies for implementing FCC. They offered me with some valuable suggestions including updating the whiteboard, be an active listener, introduce self to patients and families by stating the name, occupation, and duty (NOD), etc. However, they didn't provide me with any evidence-based rationales related to these strategies. Therefore, I decided to explore the topic more through self-directed learning. I read two journal articles on CINAHL database and browsed FCC-related articles on Alberta Health Services' (AHS) Intranet. I found the journal articles contained a lot of in-depth of information with specific focuses on certain interventions. For example, in one of the articles, the authors listed four themes of FCC (e.g. family involvement, extend visiting hours etc.) and described its benefits and challenges for implementations (Coats et al., 2018, p. 55). However, it doesn't include many feasible interventions to the surgical setting that I am practicing in. Auspiciously, I found a document: Patient and Family Centered Care Resource Kit (PFCCRK) on AHS's Intranet. The PFCCRK was

I have initially thought that FCC only applies to inpatient settings (e.g. surgery, medicine, oncology unit). However, I have learned from the operative service instructor, Lorraine Willox, RN that FCC is implemented throughout the perioperative stages (Lorraine Willox, personal communication, March 7, 2018). For example, Lorraine stated that "a lot of the HCPs consider FCC to be less important like during pre-operative and the intra-operative stage because families are not at present in the OR room and they do not have that many interactions with the healthcare team (Lorraine Willox, personal communication, March 7, 2018)." "However," she said. "you have to keep in mind that families feel the most vulnerable during these stages because they are giving us the rights to do invasive procedures to their beloved kids while being isolated away from them. They are under high levels of stress and will have a lot of concerns (Lorraine Willox, personal communication, March 7, 2018)." What she said has expanded my perception which FCC only exists in inpatient units. I was truly amazed at all the settings and strategies that HCPs can implement for FCC at the Stollery Children's Hospital for providing high-quality care to patients and