Developing Resilience In Nursing Practice A Reflective Exploration Using Gibbs Reflective Cycle

Introduction

According to the Royal College of Nursing (2016), Resilience is referred to as the ability of returning to normal state from an adverse or traumatic condition and remaining optimistic and focussed regarding the future (rcni.com, 2016). Resilience is an important quality to be possessed by nurses to address challenges in life. Ensuring that problems experienced do not drain their energy and impact on care provided (Rushton et al. 2017). In this assignment,my reflection will be focused on how resilience informs nursing practice and how I can develop it within my practice.

The NMC (2019) states it’s important as nursing professionals to always reflect on their practice, as this improves care and self-awareness. In encouraging nurses to be reflective, they are required to submit five pieces of reflections as part of revalidation (NMC,2019).

In order to reflect my experience, I am going to use Gibb’s Reflective Cycle. This model helps me in reflection as the steps in the cycle enabled me to think in a systematic way about the experiences. The straight forward wording and structure helps me to reflect as it gives me guidance on each stage to reflect on.

Description

During my initial experience with nursing prior to my registration lapse I faced various difficult situations and obstacles that made me stressed and impacted on my confidence and ability as a nurse. My main nursing experience was during my training. Due to the amount of stress and pressure I lost my self-confidence, which led me to take decision that I would leave nursing as a result, my pin expired which led me to do return to practice to fulfil my nursing degree.

In the return to practice course, I was made aware of resilience for the first time by the tutor. This occurred in the first session when for the first time I began to learn about the way resilience can be developed and why it is important in nursing in providing successful care for patients. I understood that to develop resilience the person has to develop skills such as compassion, empathy and kindness to both myself and my patient (england.nhs.uk, 2018). Being aware of this made me feel confident to understand the ways I can resolve stress and develop confidence in my nursing practice so that I can successfully provide care to them and look after my own health and wellbeing. After I lost my registration, I felt hopeless and though I can never be able to purse my dream of nursing. Learning about resilience i felt more positive that I can be able to be a successful nurse. I feel that I previously failed to complete my nursing practice because I focused too much on the criticism and avoided sharing my feeling with others to access support to get informed about resilience.

Evaluation

Resilience is required in nursing so that the nurses are able to develop improved coping mechanisms for addressing their stress that is experienced while working in difficult environments (Smith and Yang, 2017).

The development of self-awareness is essential to make the person understand which aspects are to be controlled to make them develop resilience (Rushton et al. 2015). The NMC Code informs that nurses are to act professionally by changing their practice based on the feedback (NMC, 2015). However, I only focused on what wrong I was doing and the failure made by me rather than working on to improve myself that led me to violate the NMC code. Moreover, the NMC code (2015) informs that nurses are to be emotionally intelligent and resilient in nature while providing care and supporting colleagues (NMC, 2015).In returning to nursing, I developed understanding about resilience and started to develop plans of developing resilience to correct my way of nursing practice to be successful.

Analysis

Resilience is one of the key attributes required by a nurse to be successful in providing care and executing nursing practice (RCN, 2016).Thomas and Revell (2016), states that resilience in nurses is required to help them cope with difficulties to bounce back for providing quality care. This is because without quality care the nurse cannot progress in their career. Moreover, resilience makes the nurses to think in a positive way as well as remain alert to improve care of the patients (Jo and Lim, 2016). However, in the UK, most of the nurses are reported to lack resilience that has made them feel stressed which is making them leave the profession. The numbers have been raised to 160,000 nurses leaving from the NHS, the UK in the last five years (sheffieldview.org, 2018). This is reflected in my experience where previously I left nursing because of the pressures.

In attempting to work on reducing negative thinking, developing self-compassion by alleviating negative experiences and committing to improve my nursing practice will address my lack of confidence in being a good nurse and follows the NMC Code (2015) which states that as a nurse I should be constantly reflecting, responding to feed back, updating my skills and recognising potential barriers to my nursing practice.

The NMC Code( 2015) also informs nurses that emotional intelligence and resilience are professional skills to be held by nurses and 6C’s of nursing suggests that commitment and compassion are crucial in providing good nursing care (nmc.org.uk, 2015; england.nhs.uk, 2018). Developing resilience is related to the facts mentioned in the NMC Code and 6C’s.

The use of reflection has led me to understand that there are a number of barriers to resilience this can include workplace culture, workload and feedback, this is demonstrated in the Francis report (2013) which highlighted how culture, a lack of understanding and no listening to complaints led to poor flourishing and staff and patients not feeling listened to.

In my own experience support from the colleagues and manger is crucial in helping an individual manage their feeling of anxiety and stress to adapt resilience skills (Delgado et al. 2017). I felt motivated to fulfil my nursing degree after return to practice as the colleges and manager were supportive of me and helped me to cope with difficulties that had previously led me to develop anxiety and stress as well as lose confidence in my nursing practice.

Without focus, reflection and self-awareness nurses may remain confused and unable to align the way they are to overcome trauma to achieve resilience. This may lead to attrition from the profession and holds back the belief of the nurses that they are incapable to overcome difficult situation creating barriers to achieve resilience (Reyes et al. 2015).

Conclusion

This assignment and discussion of experiences throughout my nursing training have lead me understand that resilience is key attribute in nursing I also learned that lack of focus and attrition are the key barriers to achieve resilience.

Without developing resilience skills nurses will be unable to withstand difficulties to deliver successful care and pursue their career. It is evident as resilient is about offering nurses the ability to withstand any setbacks, frustration and tragedies to offer quality care (Watson et al. 2019). In relation to my own practice I am now aware that to develop resilience I have to practice letting go of negative thinking, build on my compassion skill and follow the NMC Code(2015) and the 6C’s (Nursing in practice 2019)

Action Plan

In future, I would try to focus on resolving barriers to resilience and implement the aspects learned from the course and reflection in achieving resilience to perform nursing practices with success. The evidence collected from the reflection made to develop the action plan that in future to master resilience I am going to let go negative thinking and emotions as it will help to avoid difficult conditions. Moreover, being compassionate will help me to encourage and motivate myself with positive thinking and feelings during intense situation and gratitude will help me focus on the resources that can be used by me to succeed in difficulty making be able to avoid being holding back in negative condition.

Action Points

In order to gain resilience, I will work to change my negative emotions by managing negative thoughts and criticism. To do this I will focus on the way I need to change myself and my practice based on the feedback provided. To do this I will practice meditation, mindfulness and develop my reflective skills. This will help me in reducing my stress and ensuring that I am delivering good care and recognising my own limitation (NMC 2015).

I would also listen to experiences shared by colleagues about their career and how they might have developed resilience and try to implement the learned information on my own. In order to support others develop resilience, I will personally share my experiences and the way I coped with them to develop resilience to be a successful nurse.Sharing information and experiences is a good way of improving practice and team working.Resilience in nursing helps nurses be able to work with compassion being able to smile which leads to good nursing practice and holistic care, which is best indicator that the nurse is happy with her job. Patients judge nurse’s skills based on their interpersonal skills, caring practices and friendly manners. Being able to trust the nurse helps build a good relationship and forming connection which will ease patients stay in hospital and improves their process of recovery, due to the good care they receive from nurses. This also increases patient satisfaction good outcome and also reduces the incidents of falls and pressure ulcers (travelnursing.com, 2016).

I will be attending nursing conferences and reading more articles and books on resilience like 7 things resilient people do differently (Akash karia.2016). It will be an ongoing process to learn more on managing my stress levels and challenges with in my nursing carer. Updating my knowledge in nursing practice is an ongoing process. This will build my confidence and the care I give to my patients.

References

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