nursing is an art - reflective study

1) Background of your reflective study.

Nursing is an art; if it is made to be an art; it requires an exclusive devotion as hard a preparation; as any painter’s or sculptor’s work; for what is the having to do with a dead canvas or dead marble, compared with having to do with the living body, the temple of God’s spirit? ; it is one of the Fine Art; I had almost said the finest of Fine Arts (Nightangle, 1868).

Nursing is a unique profession. A nurse is a real superhero in the real world context. When you become a nurse, you know that every day you will touch a life or a life will touch yours (Quote Garden, 2008). Florence Nightangle, who, in her own ways has brought a drastic change upon nursing profession. She proved that a woman like her could bring a significant change to the world. She had elevated the standard of nursing and rubbed off the bad perceptions upon the nursing profession. She provided care for everyone, regardless of boundaries and backgrounds during her lifetime and I aspire to do the same too.

When a person chooses to become a nurse, they see themselves as a Florence Nightangle figure, always doing good for others, never doing wrong, never failing in anything they do. Nurses are required to think on their feet and to have critical thinking, to know what is needed in every situation and what can be done to solve the needs on that person at the time.

As a student nurse, and a staffnurse in the future, I hope to never make a mistake, but if a mistake is made, I own up to it and work to correct it. To be a perfect nurse is impossible. Nurses are human, and all human make mistakes.

I was sent to Hospital Semporna, a district hospital in Sabah, during my clinical attachment in Semester Four. It was a two month attachment.

I must say that I was thrilled to be posted to Sabah. My previous attachments were all in Sabah, and I knew that I could get almost all of the experiences and chances to do procedures.

For the whole two months of my clinical attachment in Hospital Semporna, I was assigned to Male and Female Medical Ward and also the Emergency and Trauma Unit. My task was to provide quality nursing care to all patients.

There was this male patient, who was my colleagues and I, was particularly interested in. this patient, who was 19 years old on that time, was admitted to the male medical ward, because of arthritis (query). Arthritis is a group of conditions involving damage to the joints of the body. What made it interesting was the fact that this patient has a renal failure and is already on end-stage-of-renal-failure (ESRF). He is only 19 years old.

We were shock, because we didn’t expect him to be so young to be in a tragic condition. He told us that he was first diagnosed with a renal failure (is a situation in which the kidneys fail to function adequately), when he was only 12 years old. He required a life-long haemodialysis treatment. Dialysis is the process of removing waste products and excess fluids from the body. In haemodialysis, the blood is removed from the body and pumped by a machine outside the body into a dialyzer (artificial kidney). The dialyzer filters metabolic waste products from the blood and then returns back to the person. (Merck Manual of Medical Information, 2003)

This patient attracted a whole of attraction in the ward not just because of his condition, but he was also known to be a bit of a complainer and all the staff in the ward knew how he sometimes would behave. Sometimes his behavior irritates the staffs who are trying to do their works.

When he was admitted to the ward, he still has to undergo his haemodialysis treatment at the Haemodialysis Unit (HDU).