Question

Reflective Journal Assignment

Reflect on your Current Personal Experiences

explain How you as a beginning nurse see you fitting in relational practice. Identify at least three areas (e.g., empathetic skill, conflict management, assertive communication, and personal communication etc.) you have been successful in your personal life and provide examples and reference the textbook for this course.

Answer 1

Relational practice has important implications in nursing clinical practice. First, nurses need to understand the significance of context in nursing care. Relational practice requires nurses to look beyond the surface of people, situations and relationships to find out the contextual factors which are unseen or ignored but shaped our nurse-patient interaction. Nurses need to be aware of the socioeconomic and political issues in our society and recognize how these issues impact on people’s health care [2].
Second, in Canada, a multicultural society, it is essential for nurses to understand the cultural issue and provide cultural safety in their practice [13]. Nurses’ own assumptions, beliefs and values could impair or enhance relational practice [14]. Therefore, questioning the full assumptions underlying the nursing practice can help to articulate unaware biased stereotyping and how they shape nurse-patient relationship and nursing practice. Nurses need to understand difference and diversity in people’s attitudes, beliefs and values, be sensitive to patients’ needs related to cultural issues, and practice relationally to reach cultural safety. Nurses should take responsibility to articulate bias, discrimination, and democratic racisms, and provide justice care [15].
Third, relational practice emphasizes the significant of respect in nursing care. Relational practice requires that nurses demonstrate respect for patients’ culture, age, sex, beliefs and values, health care decision and preference. Knowing patient and their family is one component of respect. Nurses should engage with patient within the specific context, and avoid assumptions, generalization and stereotyping. Authentic care, interested inquiry and attentive listening promote relational nursing practice and respectful care.
Forth, relational practice renews the content of nursing ethics. In order to practice ethically, nurses need to not only follow codes and standards, but more importantly understand patient’s experiences contextually and act on their best. Relational ethics should be applied to complement nursing codes and standards. Nurses should be aware of their obligation during their relational practice. Reflexivity should be emphasized as an essential component of the process of relational practice [16].
Fifth, nursing management and leadership should be involved in relational practice. Managers should encourage nurses to pay attention to the big picture of patient care, relate socioeconomic factors to their health care practice, and connect patients’ psychosocial factors to their health care needs. Advanced practice nurses and other nursing leaders should be involved in establishing related policies and providing further education about cultural safety and relational practice. Leaders should advocate for patients’ needs, provide adequate resources, encourage multidisciplinary
teamwork to facilitate relational nursing practice, and strive to make change in clinical practice. Advanced practice nurses and administrators should work together to increase nursing capacity to influence socioeconomic and political determinants of health [1].
Relational practice also has important implications in nursing education. Nursing schools should consider to incorporate critical social theory into nursing curricula and to educate students about cultural diversity and other psychosocial health determinants. Interpretive inquiry should be applied as a part of nursing pedagogy to encourage intense reflection and relational practice. In clinical practice, nursing educators should be aware of students’ fear of deficit in terms of skills and knowledge, promote their sense of professional identity, recognize their relational capacity, value their contribution to nursing care, empower them to be members of nursing care teams, and encourage them to practice relational inquiry.
Finally, relational practice has important implications in nursing research. Critiquing the influence of liberalism on nursing science should be a focus of nursing research. For example, liberal notions of individualism, equity, diversity and their impact on nursing practice should be further explored. Qualitative research methodologies should be applied to explore the experiences of nurses, patients and their families in the process of relational practice. Barriers and facilitators of relational practice should be discussed. Research findings should be effectively translated into different clinical settings in a timely manner.
To sum up, relational nursing practice is an understanding of patients’ health care needs within complicated contexts, in which patients experience health care and nurses deliver nursing care. It is a respectful and reflexive approach to inquire into patients’ live experiences and health care needs. It has important implications to nursing practice, education and research.
References
1. Browne AJ. The influence of liberal political ideology on nursing science (2001) Nurs Inq 8: 118-129.
2. Doane GH, Varcoe C. Relational practice and nursing obligations (2007) ANS Adv Nurs Sci 30: 192-205.
3. Doane GH. Beyond behavioral skills to human-involved processes: Relational nursing practice and interpretive pedagogy (2002) Journal of Nursing Education 41: 400-404.
4. Browne AJ, Doane GH, Reimer J, MacLeod ML, McLellan E. Public health nursing practice with ‘high priority’ families: the significance of contextualizing ‘risk’ (2010) Nurs Inq 17: 27-38.
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