Samantha Heath

UNE Nursing Student

Category: Professionalism

Presenting Change

December 14, 2022 /
CLABSI-Prevention-BrochureDownload

I brought our project to our floor at Maine Medical Center. I spoke with the charge nurse on R2 and explained that we had done a dissemination project about preventing CLABSI infections and that our project was for our evidenced based practice class at UNE. She said our project looked amazing and took the copies to put up in a few spots where the nurses could see them. She said that the infographics would catch people’s attention and nurses would love to read it.  Nurses on that floor are always so supportive and happy to learn new things so they were excited to see new posters. CLABSI prevention is something that is talked about so frequently in hospitals that anyone would be interested to know some statistics about them and the best ways to prevent the infections. 

I loved working with my team because we always supported each other at clinical and always made the best out of our time together. We made sure that all of our work was done successfully for this class and helped each other whenever we needed. I would want future employers to know that we took the time to educate ourselves about successful evidence based practice initiatives for quality improvement and we are ready to enter the nursing world. We are ready to recognize when change could occur and help implement change for the good whenever possible. Medicine is always changing and no one is too small to voice their opinions if change needs to happen. The thing that this team helped me out with a lot was making sure to get work done early. I get stuck in passing things in right on time but my group really worked on getting our projects and stuff done well before the due date so that we could take the time to double check that we did it to the best of our ability and are ready to pass it in. 

After working on this project and completing both EBP I and EBP III, I feel confident in my abilities to research healthcare topics and figuring out places in which change needs to occur and doing my research successfully. I know where to look for peer reviewed evidence based practice journal articles that are reliable, within the past five years, and have pertinent information to the topic that I am researching. I learned a lot about pulling multiple sources together and coming out with one research project from all the scattered information. 

Final Reflection

May 3, 2022 /

Annie and I chose this topic because it was something that we have thought about and wondered about before. As a woman I have always thought breastfeeding was a beautiful thing and often heard about mothers that had difficulties with it. I wondered how the alternatives to breast milk compared to it and we thought that it would be the perfect topic for this paper. 

We learned how to find articles that met up to verification standards and that had information that would specifically apply to our topic and question. We then analyzed the journal articles and pulled the most important and relevant information from all of the research and were able to compare outcomes from each source.

Working in a team was great  because we split the work perfectly and really bounced ideas off each other in order to write the best paper we could. We worked really well at reminding each other about due dates and reminding each other what sections  of the work each of us needed to complete and it was always so respected both ways.

Ethical Considerations for EBP

April 26, 2022 /

My views have mostly stayed the same. I think it is so important to know  the history and  evolution of principles of ethics to understand that patient care  has evolved in its entirety in order to provide the best care possible for the patients.  Achieving our course objectives have definitely increased my knowledge about research and its role in ethics and in the healthcare setting. Evidence-based practice is what drives innovation in the  science world and it helps to  create the safest outcomes for patients possible  based on practices implemented after trials and research of its own.

Gratitude and Self Care

April 1, 2021 /

Gratitude is important for a professional setting so that the professionals feel fulfilled with their job and feel like they are doing it well. Gratitude allows professionals to let other professionals that they work with, know that they are doing a good job. Something as simple as, “Good job with that proposal!” or “This chart looks great!” can show someone that they are performing well at their job and this will make them want to continue working and to do even better. Professionals can show gratitude in small comments like mentioned previously, or even as simply as saying thank you or smiling.

When I am feeling stressed or overwhelmed I like to make a list of things that I need to get done and the due dates so that I feel more organized. After making the list I break it up into a day by day schedule so that I can choose how much work I am getting done each day and then I feel less overwhelmed. I also do yoga once I finish the things on the list that I needed to get done for that day. In nursing I can make mental lists of things that need to get done during my work day and then do yoga or meditate once I get home from my shift to decompress from the shift.

Revisiting the Image

March 25, 2021 /

Another very important quality that nurses have is resilience. This part of nursing is not usually represented in fictional nurses because resilience comes after long strenuous hours of being a nurse. Nurses work usually for an upwards of 12 hours, which are usually overnights. Resilience is such an important quality because you have to be able to bounce back from any challenging scenario that may be thrown at you during your shift and still be able to be the best nurse you can be for the rest of the shift. If something bad happens at the beginning of your shift, you cannot let it get to you. Nurses have to be able to deal with difficult situations in the moment, process them, and move on to the next task. I chose the image above because its a nurse saying we can do it! Nurses can do so many incredible things.

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