Strengths And Weaknesses Of An ICU Nurse

Discuss about the Interventions And Care Plans For The Patients.

Intensive care units nurses work very closely with a number of physicians as well as other members of the healthcare team to develop the best interventions and care plans for the patients. They should have the ability and the skills for the effective assessment of the patient’s problems quickly and should be capable of using high tech equipments (Flinn & O’connor, 2017). Such nurses are expected to use their advanced skills for caring of the patients who are critically ill and even are suffering from different types of life threatening health problems. I also got the opportunity to serve patients in the critical care patients as a ICU nurses. This assignment will mainly be based on the different strengths, weakness, opportunities and threats that I have indentified in my professional as an ICU nurses and thereby take actions by which I can emerge out as a more successful healthcare professionals in the future.

One of the strength that I possess as a critical care nurse is my knowledge and skills. I can properly recognize every signs and symptoms of different types of complications that remain associated with the patients at the earliest stages and this gives me an upper hand in keeping situations under control and helps in maintaining the safety of the patients. One of my strength is an extensive knowledge of different types of human physiology as well as the hw the physiology changes when the condition of the patient deteriorates under different ailments and health conditions. My responsibility mainly involves intervening in different situations for preventing different complications in patients and thereby mange the well-being of the patient. I mainly do so by effective adjustments of the medications, fluid as well as therapeutic devices so that I can maintain the ability of the patient during the recovery procedures. One another strength that my mentor also appraises about me is that I have high quality communication skills that often help in handling patients in an effective manner. Mostly, patients requiring critical care remain highly conscious about their fate and suffer from anxiety throughout their stay that result in negative outcomes on their health (Sprung et al., 2014). I have the capability to establish therapeutic communication with the patients in such a way that they can overcome their anxiety and lead a better quality life in the care unit. Assessing Patients And Using High-Tech Equipment Discussion Paper  They often require emotional support when they are going through very severe ailments and the therapeutic communication established with them calms them down. I communicate with them in a compassionate and empathetic manner that makes them feel that I am genuinely interested in their recovery procedures and this ensures them to feel safe.

Moreover, I can also handle the anxiety of the family members in an effective manner and ensure proper companionship with them so that they do not feel alone or helpless in this crisis period and feel that the professionals are with them trying their best to recover the health of the patient. The third strength that I possess is the effective coordination among the team members in workplace. While working in the intensive care unit, the nurses need to not only communicate and plan their work among each other but also with other experts like physicians, technicians and others. Therefore, it is extremely important for the professionals to maintain team working attitudes and behavior as the conditions of the patient remain very sensitive and a small error might result in taking away the lives of the patients. My strength is that I have good communication skills, conflict management skills, effective listening and feedback exchange skills by which I can work successfully in teams. I am reliable and respectful and have good abilities to develop rapport with other members that help in developing bond and trust among the members. Effective decision-making skills, persuasion and influencing skills, facilitation skills make other members rely on me and therefore, I can effectively participate in effective teamwork. This has positive outcomes on patients help keeping them out of chances of danger from member conflicts and miscommunication issues.

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Effective Communication With Patients And Team Members

One of the weaknesses that I have is my fear in handling technological equipments. Intensive care units are areas where use of technology is highly prevalent and the critical care nurses not only need to have skills and knowledge to effectively handle them, but also have to be confused and swift about their movements while handling the technology and caring for the patients at the same time. I feel quite shaky when the situations to use instruments come as i always fear that some wrong functioning by me can not only affect the instruments but also the instruments may stop working with the requirement of repairing. Handling costly machines makes me nervous as I feel one wrong approach may result in economical loss of the department and I might be held responsible for poor skills in technology handling (Kelly & Morrison, 2015). Although, I can handle the electrocardiograph, pulse oximeters, blood pressure monitors and similar other monitors successfully, I become quite nervous in handling the life support machines  such as the ventilator for the breathing of the patient, intravenous devices like that of the emergency crash cart and others. This weakness may prevent me from establishing myself as an expert critical care nurse and I would not be able to participate in service for patients with such requirements of technology. The second weakness that I possess is handling patients with end of life care. It is true that not all the patients within the intensive care unit survive. Moreover, there are also patients who refuse care or their families ask to remove life support from the patients (Kon et al., 2016). Such situations become very emotional for the patients as well as the family members as they know the immediate future of the actions. Such situations of grief, pain and helplessness also affect me largely as I could not control my emotions and cannot act professionally in the situations. I often breakdown or request my seniors to change my duty with other patient only to avoid such situations that affect me largely. This should not be the behavior and attitude of a healthcare professional who can never be an escapist. My inability to self-regulate myself is one of the weaknesses that no critical nurses should ever have.

I have high amount of knowledge about the anatomy, psychology, pharmacology as well as the different types of miscellaneous knowledge required to understand the diagnostic tests that I need to perform and thereby develop ideas from the tests about the disorders that have affected the patients. Moreover, By closely observing the senior nurses and also from the experiences that I have gathered during working in the intensive care unit for large period of time, I have gained proper idea about the different types if interventions that are required for different types of disorders of the patients and therefore now I am quite confident in my approach. Assessing Patients And Using High-Tech Equipment Discussion Paper  The evidence based procedure of intervention application that I follow and the knowledge gained by me not only from theories and from experiences has made me skillful. Therefore, I believe that I have the opportunity to become a successful senior nurse where I can guide new nurses in various ways and make them successful professionals. Such skills and experience would ensure me to take new responsibilities that are required for effective management of the patient and his family and even to perform the actions that the senior nurses can ensure (Arnold et al., 2015). Besides, I can effectively work with teams and possess all the capabilities that are required for team working. I possess effective organizing as well as planning skills, decision-making skills, problem solving skill and many others. Previous reflection on my skills have helped me to realize that I also have persuasion and influencing skills, feedback skills, skills in chairing meetings as well as conflict resolution skills. Therefore, I believe that I can lead effective teams and have the opportunity to become an efficient leader in the future. I can not only lead them to meet the organizational goals but also set examples for them and motivate them in ways by which they can dedicate themselves to the critically ill patients beyond their potentials.

Collaborative Teamwork Skills

It is important for every leader in the healthcare industry to lead by example where they should be setting examples to their subordinates for achieving goals qualitatively and quantitatively. However, I am still not confident enough in handling technology and equipments in the intensive care unit that is one of the biggest aspects of critical care nursing. Use of technology to keep the patient alive is one of the very common scenario that every intensive care units are practiced to visualize (Adam, 2017). In such a scenario, my inability to handle technology might create a barrier in my aspirations to become a leader as would not be able to help my subordinates when they would require guidance and assistance from me regarding technology. This might act as a threat as it would affect my career and I might not get promoted to roes of senior nurses or nurse leaders due to my inability. Moreover, my lack of self-regulating myself in cases of patients requiring need in end of life care may also prevent the authority from positioning me as one of the important member of the healthcare teams attending the patients. I would not be able to learn the effective ways of handling such patients and the interventions that I would need o take to ensure safety and comforts to the patient and manage the emotions of the family members. Moreover, even if I ma placed as an important member caring for the patient, my emotion may act as a threat where I will not be able to think critically and apply proper evidence based intervention or may make errors in my interventions due to restlessness and emotional inability. This might be threatening to the life of the patient.

Conclusions:

The SWOT analysis helped me realize that my strengths are high amount of theoretical knowledge and skills and different learning from my experiences that help me in identifying the disorders and the interventions that are important and would beneficial for the patient. Another is the effective team working skills. All these would lead to opportunities where I can become a leader of senior nurse and help my subordinates to ensure effective care. However, my weakness is that I am quite shaky about using technology and become nervous. Moreover, I also cannot control my emotions for end of life patients and these might create barriers in my professional becoming a treat to career growth. It might also lead to unsafe or poor quality care of patients and nay errors that might threaten the existence of the patients.

References:

Adam, S. (2017). Critical care nursing: science and practice. Oxford University Press. Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/books?hl=en&lr=&id=HIoLDgAAQBAJ&oi=fnd&pg=PP1&dq=skills+required+for+intensive+care+units&ots=9bzf7qkJLe&sig=Q6sRiT-8tjUs6vXxmiGWYSykv1Y#v=onepage&q=skills%20required%20for%20intensive%20care%20units&f=false

Arnold, R. M., Back, A. L., Barnato, A. E., Prendergast, T. J., Emlet, L. L., Karpov, I., … & Nelson, J. E. (2015). The critical care communication project: improving fellows’ communication skills. Journal of critical care, 30(2), 250-254. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jcrc.2014.11.016

Flin, R., & O’Connor, P. (2017). Safety at the sharp end: a guide to non-technical skills. CRC Press. Retrieved from: https://www.taylorfrancis.com/books/9781317059950

Kelley, A. S., & Morrison, R. S. (2015). Palliative care for the seriously ill. New England Journal of Medicine, 373(8), 747-755.retreived from: https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMra1404684

Kon, A. A., Davidson, J. E., Morrison, W., Danis, M., & White, D. B. (2016). Shared decision making in intensive care units: an American College of Critical Care Medicine and American Thoracic Society policy statement. Critical care medicine, 44(1), 188. Assessing Patients And Using High-Tech Equipment Discussion Paper