I completed my first bed bath today. I also got a really good chance to perform my first skin assessment. My buddy nurse assisted me. The patient was an older adult with congested cardiac failure and chronic obstructive pulmonary disease. She was very frail.
Feelings:
I felt very anxious. I was worried that the patient would reject me as a student and as a male. I feared a gender barrier as the patient was the opposite gender and I have an understanding from my foundations of nursing text book and practical nursing classes that female patients may not always feel comfortable with a male. Especially when I am bed bathing and assessing her skin. It is very intimate proximity. I asked the patient consent and she was very kind …show more content…
I was able to work really closely with the buddy nurse to identify and assess the patients various hematoma. I think with the buddy nurses guidance I was able to more confidently perform a head to toe assessment and assess under the patients breasts which I felt uncomfortable and I felt that I was being intrusive. I think the buddy nurse noticed how uncomfortable I was and asked the patient if she minded me palpating under the patients breast which I would have been to intimated to have asked. The patient was so kind and laughed at my timidness and again assured me to continue. The patient ended up reassuring me more then I should have been reassuring the patient, I felt that I have built rapport with this patient. Additionally, the patient made some crude jokes during the assessment, which made me …show more content…
I will ask my patients if they feel comfortable with me assessing their skin areas or whether they would feel more comfortable with a buddy nurse present. I will talk more and reassure my patient to develop a rapport with them. I have no reflected and as a student I cannot be timid as the patient will not know that I need or could do more for them but I let my own shyness interfere. I will research the integument system and research risk factors for altered wound healing so that I can apply more theory to my practice and then after perform a health interview with my patient and work on developing mutual factors to challenge risk factors and improve wound healing so that my patient has optimal