Below are the 2 SMART Goals I am focusing on for my upcoming Winter Clinical Placements.
Goal 1: Enhancing my clinical Skills through Hands-on Experience.
I hope to have and enhance my clinical nursing skills in patient’ assessments, developing nursing diagnoses, planning and implementing the plan of care of my patients as well as effectively evaluating my patients’ care by the end of the NURS 1020H course in the winter term 2025. I will work on utilizing the nursing process on one patient each work with the help of my preceptor whilst evaluating and documenting my progress over the period.
Activities to be completed to achieve goals:
- During my weekly shift, I will endeavor to practice my nursing process on at least a new patient weekly with the help of my preceptor.
- I will document the process, take feedback from my preceptor as well as any challenges encountered during the process in my personal journal or notebook.
- I will review my personal reflections on the process thus far with my preceptor at the end of the shift or at the beginning of the next shift subject to my preceptor’s preference.
Resources needed for my Goals:
- Sherpath For Potter Canadian Fundamentals of Nursing for both NURS 1000 and 1001 as reference textbook.
- My Preceptor, for her inputs and advise.
- My Journal for taking notes of reflections, feedbacks, etc.
- Working checklist from my Preceptor to guide the steps and process
- Hand watch to set time and monitor progress of time used weekly on different patients for the purposes of comparison.
My Timeline for meeting Goals:
- Weeks 1-4 for going through the nursing process of patients with simple and uncomplicated conditions.
- Weeks 5 for working on all feedbacks and presenting my findings to preceptor.
- Weeks 6-10 for utilizing the nursing process for patients with challenging conditions.
- Weeks 11-12: Reflections on skills gathered during these works and ensuring consistency, efficiency and confidence in my improved skills of using nursing process for patients’ care.
Goal 2:Forming compassionate and good ties with patients.
By the end of the NUR 1020 course in the winter of 2025, I will demonstrate compassion and establish good ties with my patients. I hope to attain this by being an active listener whilst establishing eye contact during patients’ interactions, I will focus on providing emotional support by ensuring the holistic needs of my patients i.e. physical, spiritual, and emotional are well catered for and also utilize therapeutic silence in instances were verbal communication is not feasible. I hope to achieve this with at least 70% of the patients I interact with by the end of the course.
Activities to be Completed to meet Goals:
- I will demonstrate active listening skills by striving to listen attentively with every patient’s interaction, I will endeavor to show sympathy and empathy through body language and verbal communication i.e. establishing eye contact, using therapeutic touch when appropriate and consented to by patients, nodding and responding to questions among others.
- Journaling my journey of the process and reflecting to learn from my mistakes and work on by the next shift
- Regular check in with my preceptor for guidance and feedback after every interaction with patients.
Resources needed to Achieve Goals
- Review of my course content on communication and relational practice from lecture notes and reference textbook.
- Using my preceptor as my point of reference and guide for various ways to form strong ties with patients.
- A Journal for my personal reflections and feedback.
- Phone and internet access to watch YouTube videos of communication methods in different jurisdictions with the aim of inculcating good ones in my practice.
Timeline for Meeting Targeted Goals
- Weeks 1-8: I will focus on patients’ interactions and practicing my active listening skills among others
- Weeks 9-12; will be meant for Reflection on my preceptor’s feedback of things I got wrong, working on them and using different sets of patients to perfect my skills of establishing good ties and compassion with my patients.