Self-Reflection Paper Essays Examples

Newborn Care

Newborn care is one part of nursing, which is the continuation of taking care of a patient’s child. Newborn care means the protection, promotion, and optimization of the health of these fragile human beings. This is the responsibility of the neonatal nurses once the babies are in the nursery room (Green, 2012). There are various types of newborn care, depending on what an infant needs. There are generic plans and individualized plans for attending to the infants’ needs since their mothers are not yet fully rested from the whole ordeal of giving birth. My responsibility is to take care of the newborn baby and make them as healthy as their mothers want. Their continuous improvement of health lies in my hand as a neonatal nurse.
My devised plan for a newborn baby is just as systematic and ordinary as everyone who has the same job as I do. According to Linda Wood (Lowdermilk & Perry, 2004) there are three phases of newborn care. The first phase is the stabilization or resuscitation to relieve airway obstruction, if there is, and to maintain enough oxygenation and thermoregulation of the baby’s temperature. Signs and symptoms of respiratory complications should be checked. Usually, these complications are bradypnea, tachypnea, abnormal breath sounds, and respiratory distress. If there are signs of these complications, what I should do is perform a routine suction of the mouth and the nasal passages with a bulb syringe to remove the excess mucus in the respiratory tract. To regulate the temperature of the infant, I have to be aware of the four mechanisms to avoid the loss of heat, which are conduction, convection, evaporation, and radiation. An infant’s temperature stabilizes four hours after birth.
The second phase contains the assessment of completion, which consists of the physical examinations, measurements, and monitory laboratory results. I should check the baby’s vital signs, weight, length, and head and chest circumference, as well as make observation of their periods of reactivity.
The third phase consists of the nursing interventions and family teachings, which include umbilical cord care, prophylactic measures, newborn screening, infant feedings and bathing, and guidance for the parent-infant attachment. The last phase will help the parents take care of the infant when they go home. They should be well-informed of how to take care of the baby, especially if they are first-time parents. If they can’t follow the guidelines for the bathing and feeding of an infant, it would really sadden me to see that the baby I have taken care of for almost a week will be sick or will not be taken care of properly.

Coping Strategies

It is quite a strenuous work to take care of other people. Regardless of the patients’ ages, nurses often feel upset, anxious, or worn out from their everyday workload. Sometimes, feeling upset is brought about by dismays, disappointments, personal problems, and other things that may influence my job. Being a nurse requires a lot of patience, especially when dealing with difficult patients.
I have my strategies to cope with being anxious or upset. I don’t want these strong and negative feelings to get the better of me when I am in a clinical setting. First, I have to always remind myself that in my line of work, I will encounter various types of patients and that I can’t control situations in a clinical setting. The mere acceptance of the fact that I may encounter a nasty situation will make me ready for these future circumstances. It will no longer make me so angry or upset when confronted with such things. My second strategy is to try to always look for an outlet for my anger. I have to look for the right things or place where I can vent it out of my system. It is so hard to keep anger inside of you. If it is kept for a long time, then one may explode to the point that they can no longer control it. When I encounter a patient who keeps on complaining about something when I have already done my very best to attend to him, then I will just smile at him. After that, I would write everything I would have wanted to tell him in his face on a piece of paper. Then I would crumple it and throw it in trash can. That way, I extinguished the ardent feeling of anger.
My third strategy is to always remain composed. Being in a clinical setting means encountering a lot of emotions from one patient to another. It is really a big challenge for me to switch from one emotion to another, such as when I let my patients feel that I sympathize with them but at the same time also letting them feel that they can never break me under pressure. I will not let them see me shouting at them because another patient tested my forbearance. I think that if you let them see that you look soft outside but are tough inside then it would also affect how they deal with you as their nurse.
It is really important to do your best in whatever endeavor you choose. Your choice determines your destiny in life. My choice is to become successful in a nursing program. This has been my utmost end for the nursing program. I have to finish it and be able to apply whatever I have learned from this program on my patients. I feel that I would be able to make a little difference in my patients’ lives if I can do the things I have written about in this paper. Being successful in this program embodies my ideals for being a healthcare provider not only for newborn babies but in all aspects of the clinical setting. There is a saying that ‘you can’t give what you don’t have,’ which I can apply to myself. Learning everything in the nursing program by heart and being able to carry them out in the clinical setting will give me an exhilarating feeling, knowing that I am able to help in improving one’s well-being.

References

Green, C. (2012). Maternal Newborn Nursing Plans. ( 2nd ed.) USA: Jones & Barlett, LLC.
Lowdermilk, D. L. & Perry, S. E. (2004). Maternity & women’s health care (8th ed.). St. Louis,
MO: Mosby.