Learning Plan for Long Term Care

To establish independent and exemplary patient care to my assigned residents within this long-term care unit, with a focus on the safety of cognitively impaired residents and leadership when working with unregulated health care workers, under the supervision of my preceptor, by April 12th, 2020.

Rationale:

The purpose of this process is to enable me to acquire the experience and practical knowledge which will complement what I have already acquired in the school. This will improve my value as a student nurse in the pediatrics. This objective will task me to work with various professionals in the nursing industry as well as the Families in order to achieve proper care for patients as well as personal value addition in this profession.

Relevant Practice Documents from the College of Nurses:

CNO Professional Standards (2018)- I will be representing standards of accountability, leadership, and knowledge application throughout this learning plan process. This is evidenced by myself taking ownership and initiative of implementing my learning plan, all while gaining knowledge to apply and develop my professional self in the clinical setting.

CNO Ethics (2019)- I am ethical towards all populations that I am in contacts with, such as inter/intra professionals, families, and children. Being mindful of the wishes and opinions of everyone through respecting their contribution that they have to offer for the quality care of the client and their family.

Working with unregulated Care providers- I will be working closely with the unregulated care providers so that I closely monitor their activities and ensure I make them learn the guidelines and practical theories learned from my classroom set up for them to improve their Care experience more.

To demonstrate my enhanced professional knowledge and expertise in the safety management of residents with cognitive impairment. My preceptor will evaluate my performance and knowledge of assessment, planning, implementing, and assessing with a focus on risk factors, prevention of falls, and best practice guidelines by February 24th, 2020.

To carry out a scholarly and grey literature review on recommended best practice interventions for safety management of residents with cognitive impairments. This literature will be used to inform my practice and will be shared with my preceptor for assessing reliability and validity. A minimum of three scholarly research within five years will be used; all evidence will be put into my portfolio by February 10^nd, 2020.

To carry out an environmental scan of my long-term care setting to asses gaps present in the physical environment, fall prevention policies, and in the practices of health care workers (Personal Support Workers and Nurses) that promote an unsafe environment for cognitively impaired residents. I will use scholarly literature from activity one to guide my assessment of the gaps. This will be evidenced by the completion of a list containing all the complied gaps that I have identified and gathered in my placement; evidence will be approved and evaluated by my preceptor by February 14^th, 2020, before being added to my portfolio.

To demonstrate my developing professional leadership when working with an unregulated health care worker in this long-term care setting. My preceptor will evaluate my leadership performance when working with Personal Support Workers and other student learners with a focus on delegation of tasks and reporting of pertinent resident information to the charge nurse, within my scope of practice as a fourth-year nursing student, by February 24th, 2020.

Completing evidenced-based scholarly research on best practice health teaching techniques to incorporate Conduct an academic literature review on understanding the role of the registered charge nurse as a leader at a long-term care facility. The literature will focus on understanding the leadership relationship of the Registered Nurse with both practical nurses and unregulated health care providers (PSW’s). The literature will be shared with my preceptor for validity and be put into my portfolio as evidence by March 15^th, 2015.

To carry out my role as a leader in this long-term care setting as a future Registered Nurse, my tasks will be determined and supported by the scholarly literature found from activity one. I will also create an evaluation tool using the academic literature to assess the quality of my leadership capabilities, role play delegating tasks to unregulated health care providers, prioritizing tasks to be done by the Registered Nurse. I will critically reflect on this growth in a one-page summary to be put into my portfolio by March 20^th, 2020.

Summary of Activities

Sub-goal one:

In my assessment, I think that I have made a significant impact on achieving this goal because since I completed all the activities. These activities would rank my success and the completion of my goals.

Activity one:

I carried out the necessary scholarly and grey literature review on recommended best practice intervention for the safety management of cognitively impaired residents. With my sub-goal in mind, I was able to understand all the knowledge and guideline through literature reviews, which improved my skills in handling the patients and also improving the performance and skills of the unregulated care providers who were the social community groups. The main challenge was to be able to understand the different and unique needs. Every patient required and assisting them adequately and in a timely manner. This forced me to go the extra mile to spending more time with each patient and having discussions with their family members with the intention of trying to figure out behaviors of each patient to achieve my goals effectively and reduce any chances of failure. Although at first, it was very difficult to deal with the patients due to the nature of their illnesses, the family members were very helpful in assisting me with the patients. In particular, my nurse educator was able to guide me and provide me with regular tips to make my work easier. In this whole activity, I have been able to add value to my practice and also enhanced my ability to be a competent nurse. This can be evidenced by the fact that I have worked closely with the key individuals who are at the center of these patients and who understand the practical situation better. With every passing moment, my experience and the quality of the work I am doing has improved and the impact of my presence in the lives of the patients in very significant. I will take this experience as a learning opportunity when faced with difficult decisions in my future nursing practice and overcoming them in order to ensure a quality practice environment in the future.

Activity Two:

I identified the knowledge gaps that I needed to fill in the long-term care for patients living with cognitive impairments after carrying out the environmental scan. During the scan, I established a patient management plan, which was quite useful in this activity in ensuring the success and achievement of my goal. There are limited written nursing scholarly articles that address some specific issues of the patients living with Cognitive Impairment. This would, in the end, make my quality treatment to be poor and unreliable. However this did not stop my endeavor to finding the solutions to providing proper long term care, instead, I discovered some articles which were essential and was addressing critical issues in the management of the patients with a cognitive impairment which provides a comprehensive guideline on the ways of managing these patients (Sousa, Formiga & Costa,2015). According to the article, it gives that patients should firmly adhere to the treatment. In supporting a firm adherence to medication amongst patients, it is essential that patients are strict with taking their drugs and that patients should be aware of their treatment and how discipline is critical. Also, other than offering the patient with medications, the patient should have other tips like carrying around instructions written on a paper which they would carry them around in case they forget something there could refer to it e.g., Directions, shopping list, etc.

I used this research to understand better the patients’ problems and how to solve them with my colleagues. I have had the opportunity to inquire with my fellow nurses, some nurses, and doctors about their recommendations for patients living with Cognitive Impairment. I developed confidence and more knowledge through regular consultation and sharing knowledge with others to establish quality long term care practice.

Sub-goal two:

I achieved this goal with much success as each and every person I worked with, particularly the Unregulated healthcare workers and colleagues. The families of the patients I was dealing with providing the best assistance anyone can get. As a team leader in this activity, I can say my leadership skills achieved a total success because they were effective, and patients were very happy and satisfied with the kind of services they were getting.

Activity one:

I have been very keen to make observations about my patient requirements and knowledge in learning from the situations I was going through and interacting with colleagues, professionals and the social community who form part of the unregulated health workers. The interprofessional team did scholarly literature to enhance my learning experience.  Upon initiating an academic literature review in the learning plan, I discovered various articles that can be found in my portfolio that increased my understanding of how to perform discharge teaching while maintaining a family-centered approach. One scholarly literature that I believe truly enhanced my approach and perception in practice.

Inter-professional collaboration is essential in generating patient and family satisfaction in discharge. As a result, I used this as a vital step in both gaining and enhancing my knowledge regarding useful discharge techniques and family-centered care. This experience contributed to my learning as I learned from the nurses and physicians that it is essential that I do not ignore the family while I perform discharge irrespective of how severe Cognitive impairment  is. I learned that family is a constant in my patients’ life, while the service system and healthcare providers will alternate throughout their life. This was a learning experience as I had not been in such a situation in my entire nursing experience.

Activity two:

I have achieved the experience and knowledge through the creation of a comprehensive teaching evaluation tool to use in the delivery of my nursing services to the people living with cognitive impairment in the long term healthcare plan. This improved my discharge technique, in line with the scholarly literature by Hudani, 2016, he argues thatpediatric social insurance must join the rule of information sharing, with respect to relatives, association, exchange, and care in each part of giving consideration. In order to deliver my goals to the responsibility of the patient, I used is the healthcare process as a basis for my evaluation by my Nursing instructor. The activity is important in enhancing my learning experience and skill competency as I am creating a tool which should be able to evaluate the results and conclusions of my learning plan (Prado-Inzerillo, Clavelle& Fitzpatrick,2018).

Critical Refection

I have been able to conduct my practice on long term health care on patients with Cognitive Impairment with a lot of success. I was able to meet my sub-goals with significant success, and the experience I was able to derive from the process was vast. I feel that my value in the nursing field is entirely unmatched. For instance, the sub-one goal was completed because of the teamwork with the colleagues and the unregulated health care workers despite the challenges of having to understand the needs of every patient. I have learned to operate a fully functioning Family-based care center providing long term care for patients living with Cognitive Impairment while dealing with Inter-professional. This collaboration of professionals has ensured quality care in Patients and families (Wiener and Sullivan,1995). I learned that dedication and proper leadership makes everything possible with regard to providing patients with services, and most importantly, it leads to a happier and peaceful society.

I have also learned the importance of collaboration between various professionals. For example, during my time at the Family center, the close working relationship between myself, the unregular healthcare providers, and my nursing tutors made the work very easy, and the flow of services was very efficient. The level of recovery by some patients was very impressive. The families were happy; they often applauded us for the commendable job. This lesson boosted my professional growth.

My character was also significantly impacted by the nature of the situation I was dealing with. Handling patients with Cognitive Impairment is complicated because they tend to forget very fast. It requires patience and understanding of the highest order to handle them, and I can say patience and understanding is what I have learned and has become somewhat part of my character.

From this whole experience, I would recommend that Nurses should include family members as partners in care (Reed & Fitzgerald, 2005). I trust I held numerous abilities all through this learning procedure. Also, I have kept the competency of administration as I have stepped up to the point of executing my learning plan despite the boundary introduced to me (Prado-Inzerillo, Clavelle& Fitzpatrick,2018). Responsibility and the standard of information were held; however, taking proprietorship in executing this learning plan all while picking up information through insightful writing and interprofessional joint effort. In general, this learning plan has been an extraordinary open door for myself not just to consider my capacities as a medical attendant yet likewise additionally to coordinate myself into the human services framework. I will take all the hindrances introduced to me and to, and the new information picked up right now, further upgrade my training later on.