Changes in the Project - Essay Example

?REFLECTIVE DIARY The whole project was like a nightmare to me. I had very difficult time doing it specially that at the beginning of the project I felt that I am not ready. This is because I was not prepared to start undertaking the needed research, even at the time that I was due to begin. This lack of preparedness can be taken from several perspectives and considerations including psychological, emotional, academic, and socially. However, all this feeling changed with the skill that I gained throughout the all steps of the project. The absence of my preparedness notwithstanding, there was several ways in which I received support to boast my confidence level to begin the project. Much of this confidence came from the level of cooperation that I had with the unit manager, under whom I was working. Taking permission to start such a project was not that difficult specially that the unit manger is very supportive and the ER consultants are very enthusiastic to do so. The very first of the processes for working on the project was to get a proposal ready. So on the 13th of December, 2012, I submitted my proposal to the manager about education for public about Triage process. Though I thought this was going to be a very useful area to research, the manager disagreed with it because one of the emergency consultants started that project and was almost done. I felt disappointed because I had to start searching for another topic and time get shorter. I went to my manager again and we had a discussion to find another topic. Using his experience at the workplace over the last seven years, the manager showed clearly that there were different goals that he had, which were more suitable to our working conditions than I had given. I was made to evaluate some of these goals and out of it, landed on one of them, which would later become the research topic. The research problem was based on a problem identified in the immediate environment of the hospital. It was observed from the emergency department that the number of pediatric attending A/E room is high so we decided to see why and then we started the project of education. Once I got the approval from the manager I was relaxed and I started to do my project. I started the actual action towards the project two days after I had received the final approval on the topic from my supervisor and this was on the 20th of December, 2012. The very first action taken by me was to start looking for secondary sources of information to prepare my research questions and themes for the literature review. First I started with the pamphlet which has information about fever management for children at home before attending accident emergency. After all necessary information was collected I went to the marketing department for an approval to start undertaking the education section for the patients. But yet again, I will receive a shock to the success and smooth progress of the project as I was informed when I went to marketing department and find out that I still needed approval from the pediatric consultant who was not available in the hospital by that time. This made me highly uneasy and upset because I started feeling bad about the success of the project again because I felt the time was delaying. It is for this reason that I say that actions depend on situations because whenever things went right, my actions were positive and joyful. On 25th of December, 2012 when I was informed that the paediatric consultant had travelled, I became very disturbed and thought that some people wanted to sabotage the progress of my project. But after the consultant returned in two weeks, I found that the situation was nothing like what I thought about her or the people in the department. After 2 weeks she came back and we discussed the project together and she welcomed the idea and supported me to do so. Once I got the approval I started the data collection over a period of 2 weeks. I some faced problems at first with data collection because most of the parent when they bring their children to the emergency for treatment only. This situation alone was a major challenge because the parents were not in their right minds to give particular attention to the data collection process. Even more, most of the parents were not educated because the hospital is located in a suburb area, which has a very low literacy rate. So I had difficulty to convince them of how effective the education section would be and how they are going to benefit from it. Education started in the pediatric in accident emergency after doctor consultation and it was about how to do proper sponge bath, how to measure child temperature and how to use antipyretic in a safe manner and finally pamphlet were distributed to the parent that has general information on how to manage child fever from evidence based sources. I did not face any difficulties with the education session because all my colleague and emergency staff supported me in the change project. Finally changes in the project were implemented and these changes were very paramount at the emergency department. Another area that I faced difficulty on was with the actual writing of the dissertation. At the initial states, I felt it was difficult to write such amount of words but when I started giving it a try, it worked easily with me. As a matter of fact, if I had not received support from people from different backgrounds including family and friends, I would have been totally discouraged from completing the dissertation. This is because apart from the fact that the dissertation was numerous, I also received so many negative feedbacks from the supervisor, which meant that I needed to change so many parts of the dissertation. Gradually, I was able to fulfil all requirements of the supervisor and the project was successfully completed with the aim of educating parents on home based management of fever duly achieved. Read More