Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal
In order to support one’s knowledge of nursing practice as a discipline, one must take a realistic approach to comprehend clinical practices to solving healthcare issues. Combining practice with theory is important for improving nurses’ knowledge of healthcare problems and illuminating evidence-based practice. A professional capstone and practicum course allows student nurses to engage in real-world nursing practice while still learning from their experiences. For example, nurses operating in hospitals are often faced with cases of hospital-acquired infections (HAIs). Identifying the factors that increase patient vulnerability to HAIs and implementing an evidence-based practice to aid in preventing HAIs is a move in the right direction in addressing the issue. This capstone and practicum reflective journal covers topics such as the new practice approach, interprofessional collaboration, clinical and healthcare delivery processes, ethical considerations, and many more Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
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New Practice Approach
Implementing successful prevention of healthcare-acquired infections is a part of dealing with healthcare issues. The capstone and practicum course enabled me to learn about the various strategies to preventing HAIs. The implementation of hygiene practices, particularly hand hygiene, was the most important evidence-based practice I learned during the course. This is in line with Fernando, Gray & Gottlieb’s (2017) assertions, which indicate that the emergence of HAIs among hospitalized patients results from non-compliance with hand hygiene practices by health care providers and patients, leading to infection transmission. According to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), handwashing is the most effective way to deter contagious pathogen spread. In addition, the implementation of hygiene procedures affects how inpatients are cared for and offer professional practice guidance for student nurses. As Fernando, Gray & Gottlieb’s (2017) mentioned, the implementation of hand hygiene protocol necessitates health professionals’ understanding of risk factors, triggers, and existing evidence-based approaches in the delivery of safe and quality care Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
Interprofessional Collaboration
The capstone and practicum course demonstrated that nurses, just like all the other healthcare providers, should at all times work collectively to improve their patients’ health. They must collaborate because successful care delivery requires input from various healthcare providers within an organization (Wei et al., 2020). The implementation of a hand hygiene practice necessitates the cooperation of all stakeholders. In order to prevent hospital-acquired infections, patients, doctors, nurses, pharmacists, and administration are liable for ensuring hand hygiene compliance. Health care professionals must use integrity to drive change when implementing this hygiene practice, and this was an interesting component of the entire project.
Clinical and Healthcare Delivery Systems
Healthcare delivery is reliant not only on healthcare practitioners but also on the healthcare and clinical structures that aid in the coordination of healthcare resources. According to Erwin and Krishnan (2016), in order to influence change, clinical and healthcare delivery systems must be redesigned to address the desires of both patients and healthcare professionals. To improve the implementation of the new practice intended to prevent HAIs, the healthcare organization’s system and the clinical system had to be redesigned. For example, hand hygiene was integrated into the healthcare system and practices to improve the safety of hospitalized patients susceptible to HAIs. In addition, there were systemic reforms in the healthcare system designed to increase the consistency, efficacy, and reliability of healthcare services provided to patients and revamping processes to enable the implementation of primary care approaches. Patient-centred care, for example, was implemented in combination or separately to restructure health care service delivery in order to enhance patient health outcomes. Enhancing self-care by patients, encouraging healthcare practitioners to render change recommendations and adopt the change practice, and strengthening leadership skills were all part of the system changes.
Ethical Considerations
It is crucial to recognize the ethical issues associated with the adoption and continuation of the change practice, which is intended to improve the health and safety of patients susceptible to hospital-acquired infections. In particular, it is often necessary that healthcare professionals address ethical concerns that could arise as a result of a particular practice or procedure in all medical settings. As Thornton et al. (2017) indicated, healthcare professionals are accountable for improving their patients’ wellbeing, minimizing harm to their clients, and integrating their medical care skills Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
Although hand hygiene is important for improving patient health and safety, ethical concerns can emerge if healthcare practitioners refuse to follow institutional hand hygiene practice recommendations. The theory-practice ethics barrier applies to this ethical concern. Owing to a lack of time, leadership, and priority setting, employees can fail to achieve hand hygiene activity goals. The practicum showed that failing to follow healthcare delivery rules would lead to ethical issues. Thus healthcare professionals should really think about following them. As demonstrated in the practicum, the foundation of ethical consideration is ensuring delicate concerns like patient confidentiality must be protected, and patients are well-served by using evidence-based approaches.
Practices of Culturally Sensitive Care
In general, I was well-informed that I would connect and collaborate with individuals from diverse cultures in the nursing field, necessitating my familiarity with various communities. I was lucky enough to learn the importance of pursuing culturally sensitive care through my capstone project and practicum practices. It’s important to keep in mind that a nurse can deliver service that satisfies a patient’s expectations by respecting and considering their cultural beliefs (Claeys et al., 2020). During last week’s practicum activities, for example, I discovered that patients from Hispanic or other ethnic communities have different perspectives on including their relatives in their care. I noticed that Hispanics were enthusiastic about the idea, whereas African-Americans did not want their relatives involved. As such, I learnt that quality care should be sensitive to clients’ cultural needs and practices Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
Ensuring the Integrity of Human Dignity in the Care of All Patients
My participation in practicum activities and the capstone project has enabled me to broaden my understanding of human dignity in the delivery of healthcare to all patients. It is important to remember that all healthcare providers’ duty is to safeguard the integrity of the client’s human dignity, irrespective of their status when providing care (Kadivar, Mardani-Hamooleh & Kouhnavard, 2018). Although I always knew that ethical standards and the code of conduct of a health institution direct all nursing practices when providing care, my practicum course allowed me to understand how the usage of ethics and standards of practice strengthens human dignity for various patients. For instance, the code stated that proper hand hygiene should be stressed because it is a morally right decision aligned with the ideals required of good healthcare professional.
Population Health Concerns
The capstone and practicum course showed that patient populations are continually concerned about their welfare and that these concerns range from one patient population to the next. According to the capstone project, the hospitalized patient population is unique from other populations because they are more likely to experience HAIs. According to research, HAIs are a significant health problem for hospitalized patients since they are linked to a lower quality of life and higher mortality. The economic effect of HAIs is another health issue.
Accessing and using quality care services for inpatients with HAIs is an expensive endeavor since the infections are linked to higher treatment costs (Nguemeleu et al., 2020). As a result, the population is always struggling to lower the expense of care, which could reduce the use of healthcare resources for critical issues, resulting in poor health outcomes. The capstone and practicum course presented proof of how healthcare providers and inpatients should work together to solve those problems. In addition, the capstone and practicum course has taken a move toward tackling these challenges by promoting patient-provider cooperation in the implementation and compliance with hand hygiene.
Role of Technology
Technology has become an integral component of the healthcare system in the twentieth century, with most processes involving some technological implementation. One such technology, hand hygiene-specific sensing technology, is intended to guarantee that healthcare staff practice hand hygiene during the WHO’s critical moments of care. It improves transparency, establishes a monitoring framework, and gives healthcare staff a feeling of ownership. Hand hygiene adherence is tracked and promoted through this technology (Marra and Edmond, 2014) using a unique badge with different colors to denote hand hygiene status – green indicates that hand hygiene has been done, yellow indicates that hand hygiene should be practiced. Red indicates that hand hygiene should be practiced instantaneously. The research surrounding sensing technologies points to a creative way to assess and enhance hand hygiene activity for health care workers, with the ultimate aim of enhancing patient outcomes. Ultimately, the instant alerts from their badges hold health care staff more responsible for their hand hygiene procedures, enabling them to better relate their hand hygiene activities to their involvement in minimizing hospital-acquired infections and ensuring patient safety Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
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Health Policy
Health policies are blueprints for achieving or completing specific objectives. A policy can be easily implemented by establishing a project’s or organization’s goal since the goal sets project objectives and reference points. The capstone and practicum course demonstrated that policies would be developed to lead the target entities to execute any reform procedure. Instead of employing hand hygiene as a practice, the capstone project turned it into a health policy to shape care delivery and improve patient health. The policy defines goals for achieving cohesion and is fully articulated within the organization—the project implemented a change in practice as a critical HAI prevention approach Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
Leadership and Economic Models
Change can be a difficult task at times. The capstone and practicum course, on the other hand, showed that constructive leadership styles are crucial in promoting change. The transformational leadership paradigm is by far the most crucial leadership style for the prevention of Healthcare-acquired infections. According to Masood & Afsar (2017), the transformational leadership model necessitates the cooperation between leaders and their followers to solve an issue while promoting reform. The model’s implementation aids in the transition from antibiotic dependence to hand hygiene in preventing hospital-acquired infections and transmitting leadership abilities from a leader to followers. Since the change practice did not impose financial costs on the organization, adopting an economic framework was not apparent.
Health Disparities
Health disparities are a major problem in multicultural societies. Inequalities may arise due to socioeconomic factors, race, sexual orientation, gender, and geographic location. The presence of health disparities is instrumental in stopping the Healthy People 2020 targets from being met. In addition, inpatients who stay in the hospital for an extended period can incur high medical costs. Therefore, the adoption of Medicare has become a priority for the organization to improve care access (Meyers & Johnstone, 2021) Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal.
Conclusion
Practical and theoretical and courses are often required of student nurses. The professional capstone and practicum course has become most daunting yet rewarding since students have had the opportunity to interact with real-world scenarios. Since completing the course, I have a clear grasp of nursing processes and how clinical procedures affect patients’ safety and health. The course was beneficial in mending the discrepancy between theory and experience, improving one’s capacity to be in the field.
References
Claeys, A., Berdai-Chaouni, S., Tricas-Sauras, S., & De Donder, L. (2020). Culturally Sensitive Care: Definitions, Perceptions, and Practices of Health Care Professionals. Journal of Transcultural Nursing, 1043659620970625. Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal https://doi.org/10.1177/1043659620970625
Erwin, K., & Krishnan, J. A. (2016). Redesigning healthcare to fit with people. https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/27553644/
Fernando, S. A., Gray, T. J., & Gottlieb, T. (2017). Healthcare-acquired infections: Prevention strategies. Internal Medicine Journal, 47(12), 1341-1351. https://doi.org/10.1111/imj.13642
Kadivar, M., Mardani-Hamooleh, M., Kouhnavard, M., & Sayarifard, A. (2021). Nurses’ attitudes toward caring for terminally ill neonates and their families in Iran: A cross-sectional study. Journal of Medical Ethics and History of Medicine. https://doi.org/10.18502/jmehm.v14i4.5651
Marra, A., & Edmond, M. (2014). New technologies to monitor healthcare worker hand hygiene. Clinical Microbiology and Infection, 20(1), 29-33. https://doi.org/10.1111/1469-0691.12458
Masood, M., & Afsar, B. (2017). Transformational leadership and innovative work behavior among nursing staff. Nursing Inquiry, 24(4), e12188. https://doi.org/10.1111/nin.12188
Meyers, D. J., & Johnston, K. J. (2021). The growing importance of Medicare Advantage in health policy and health services research. JAMA Health Forum, 2(3), e210235. https://doi.org/10.1001/jamahealthforum.2021.0235
Tchouaket Nguemeleu, E., Beogo, I., Sia, D., Kilpatrick, K., Séguin, C., Baillot, A., Jabbour, M., Parisien, N., Robins, S., & Boivin, S. (2020). Economic analysis of healthcare-associated infection prevention and control interventions in medical and surgical units: Systematic review using a discounting approach. Journal of Hospital Infection, 106(1), 134-154. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jhin.2020.07.004
Thornton, K. C., Schwarz, J. J., Gross, A. K., Anderson, W. G., Liu, K. D., Romig, M. C., Schell-Chaple, H., Pronovost, P. J., Sapirstein, A., Gropper, M. A., & Lipshutz, A. K. (2017). Preventing harm in the ICU—Building a culture of safety and engaging patients and families. Critical Care Medicine, 45(9), 1531-1537. https://doi.org/10.1097/ccm.0000000000002556
Wei, H., Corbett, R. W., Ray, J., & Wei, T. L. (2019). A culture of caring: The essence of healthcare interprofessional collaboration. Journal of Interprofessional Care, 34(3), 324-331. https://doi.org/10.1080/13561820.2019.1641476
Students maintained and submitted weekly reflective narratives throughout the course to explore the personal knowledge and skills gained throughout this course. This assignment combines those entries into one course-long reflective journal that integrates leadership and inquiry into current practice as it applies to the Professional Capstone and Practicum course. This final submission should also outline what students have discovered about their professional practice, personal strengths and weaknesses that surfaced during the process, additional resources and abilities that could be introduced to a given situation to influence optimal outcomes, and, finally, how the student met the competencies aligned to this course. The final journal should address a variable combination of the following, while incorporating your specific clinical practice experiences: 1. New practice approaches 2. Interprofessional collaboration 3. Health care delivery and clinical systems 4. Ethical considerations in health care 5. Practices of culturally sensitive care 6. Ensuring the integrity of human dignity in the care of all patients 7. Population health concerns 8. The role of technology in improving health care outcomes 9. Health policy 10.Leadership and economic models 11. Health disparities While APA style is not required for the body of this assignment, solid academic writing is expected, and in-text citations and references should be presented using APA documentation guidelines, which can be found in the APA Style Guide, Benchmark – Professional Capstone and Practicum Reflective Journal