Patient Teaching Reflection

Lastly, this class has impacted my nursing career by allowing me to understand how important patient teaching is for the patient. One of our assignments was to complete a patient teaching session and discuss the basics of how it went and what in the session could be improved. Upon review of the syllabus before conducting the teaching session, I figured there was a limited amount of research and preparation which needed to be done. I assumed that once I had met the patient I would understand on my own observation what would be best in the means of how to effectively teach the patient. When meeting my patient who I would be conducting the teaching session on, I realized that my limited background knowledge and observations would not be enough to effectively teach this patient everything they needed to know about ileostomy care. Lewenson and Truglio-Londrigan (2015) also talk about critical thinking in the sense of providing patient teaching. They stress the importance of knowing background knowledge on a topic to effectively discuss problems and solutions to these problems. Even though I had a brief understanding of ileostomy care, I
Not only has my critical thinking skills improved, but my self-confidence has improved. I have also expanded my knowledge on who I am as a person, and along with that how I work with others in a group setting. I also have had practice creating and implementing a teaching session with a patient on a unit. Having nursing students learn to shape their critical thinking skills is very important, especially because it is overlooked by the nursing students themselves. I can safely say that after this course and the assignments linked to this course, I have learned the importance of critical thinking skills in nursing and will continue to use and develop these skills in my nursing