Evidence Informed Reflection #1

Gregory Wendt

BSCN 4094

Jessica Dugas & Barb Engle

Sault College

April 2nd, 2024

 The specific learning objective that I want to address in this journal is my goal to improve

my time management before the end of my clinical placement. This is a goal that I think is

important for nurses to master and it’s one that I have struggled with in the past.

I had a recent experience during my consolidation that forced me to improve my time

management. I was tasked with taking care of a full team during a day shift on Monday and these

tend to be the busiest days on the unit because anything non-critical that comes up during the

weekend ends up getting left for Monday. This is because anything that needs to be brought to

physicians or management must wait because they aren’t on site at the hospital over the

weekend. This combined with the patients many physical and occupational therapy appointments

makes for a very busy day. I was trying to manage the entire team while making time to chart

and write patient notes. I barely had enough time to get everything completed during the twelve-

hour shift. However, I think that this experience was good for me because the best way to

develop time management skills is through practice and trial and error.

I think that I handled the experience well because it can be difficult as a student who is

new to the floor to manage a full team when it is a busy day. I tried my best to follow my

learning strategies which were writing down my tasks that need to be completed in order to not

forget anything. There are many things that I could have done differently because I am still new

to working on the unit and I am still figuring out the best way to do things. For example, I could

have tried to multitask better, but since I am still new the floor, I didn’t want to take on too many

tasks at once.

After my experience at clinical on Monday I read a journal article online about how

newly graduated registered nurses often become overly focused on completing individual tasks

rather than looking at the overall goal for the patient. With time management being a difficult
skill to master, sometimes new graduates have a hard time choosing between patient safety and

completing all of their work on time (Murray et al., 2019). I think that reading an article like this

helps to remind me to not get overly caught up in the smaller details of patient care. I also read a

journal article about the outcomes of patients who are coming from an inpatient rehabilitation

center. The research found that two out of three patients reported an improvement in their

physical functioning after spending time at an inpatient rehabilitation facility (Simning et al.,

2018). I find it inspiring to learn about the ways in which our nursing care can help to improve

the quality of lives of our patients.

I am really enjoying my placement and I feel like I am learning a lot. I’m glad that I was

placed on the rehabilitation unit because I like being able to watch patients improve and

transition back into their lives at home.

 References
Murray, M., Sundin, D., & Cope, V. (2019). Benner’s model and Duchscher’s theory:

Providing the framework for understanding new graduate nurses’ transition to practice. Nurse

Education in Practice, 34. 199-203. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2018.12.003

Simning, A., Caprio, T. V., Seplaki, C. L., Temkin-Greener, H., Szanton, S. L., &

Conwell, Y. (2018). Patient-reported outcomes in functioning following nursing home or

inpatient rehabilitation. Journal of the American Medical Directors Association, 19(10). 864-

870. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jamda.2018.06.014