REFLECTIVE BLOG ENTRY: USING REFLECTION AND CRITICAL THINKING TO ADDRESS HEALTH & SOCIAL CARE DILEMMAS AND SOLVE PROBLEMS IN MENTAL HEALTH

 

Description

As a nurse, I recently provided care to a patient who was admitted with serious anxiety and depressive state. At some point during a shift, the patient became agitated, declined medication, stated that they had suicidal thoughts. Complications and stress were experienced as I tried to settle them down since there were other tasks needing attention. Particularly, with the help of a senior colleague, we averted the critical situation, but the forcefulness of the situation left me thinking over my mental health care approach.

Feelings

When the incident occurred, I felt helpless and frustrated that whatever I could do would not help the situation and this could aggravate the condition of the patient. The feeling of guilt appeared as I pursued the balance of activities fearing that I was not addressing their needs. The de-escalation experience left me feeling freed though I felt exhausted spiritually and made me think more about mental health issues in the nursing field.

Evaluation

It had both good and bad sides. And asking someone older to help in a positive way is to take care of a patient and demonstrate the cooperation of the team. On the negative side, I was not quite sure about my answer and I had time limit. It is essential to pay more attention to the mental health training of nurses and workload management.

Analysis

Gibbs Reflective Cycle taught me that my struggle was rooted in the lack of experience when facing some acute mental health crisis (Aveyard and Waite, 2024). Reflective practice would have assisted me in implementing calming techniques sooner because it is also consistent with Fook (2012) who also fevered adaptive skills. The patient had suicidal ideations and had to be acted upon immediately, through the support that supports the recommendations by Nursing & Midwifery Council (2023). The cycle demonstrated the detrimental effect of stress on my judgment, which is a typical problem in mental health nursing indicating the necessity of self-care and being prepared.

Conclusion

This experience taught me that mental health care requires patience and expertise that is not covered by general nursing. The fact that I did not have to act on my own was a lesson but asking assistance was not wrong. The problem is that I must increase my self-confidence in handling of such cases and know when I should escalate care. To continue my practice going into the future, I will work on incorporating reflection to enhance my practice and support patients more.

Action Plan

I will receive a mental health first aid training, as I want to develop my skills, as suggested by Paul and Elder (2013), and do de-escalation drills regularly. I will also develop my personal checklist of the strategies to follow during a mental health crisis, so I could treat it with the utmost safety and consult supervision in case supervision is required. Application of the Gibbs model will enable me every week to evaluate similar circumstances to turn obstacles into learning opportunities. In case of the same situation, I will implement the acquired strategies in action and record the procedure to improve on the methodology.

 

References

Aveyard, H., & Waite, M. (2024). A Beginner's Guide to Critical Thinking and Writing in Health and Social Care, 3e. McGraw-Hill Education (UK).

Fook, J. (2012). 19 Implementing critical reflection in health and social care settings. Critical Reflection in Context: Applications in Health and Social Care, 233.

Nursing & Midwifery Council. (2023). Social Media Guidance. Available at: https://www.nmc.org.uk/standards/guidance/social-media-guidance/

Paul, R., & Elder, L. (2013). Critical thinking: Tools for taking charge of your professional and personal life. Pearson Education.

Comments

  1. thestranger9 August 2025 at 05:54

    many sentences are left with no in text citation and you have not explained the reason behind it , please make sure you do so

    ReplyDelete

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