Critical Case Study Exploration Using Gibbs Model - Essay Example

She also appeared to lack confidence in her nursing skills and had difficulties in relating theory to practice. Stage II Nursing skills are developed over time using education as a sound base along with the number of rich experiences (Dracup, 2004). Dreyfus had described the five stages that a nurse travelled through in her service: “novice, advanced beginner, competent, proficient, and expert” (Dracup, 2004). Mentoring has been accepted as a sound method to facilitate the growth of a nurse in her journey from novice to expert.

Mentoring has been defined as a relationship in which a more experienced person acts as an advisor for someone less experienced to assist his or her personal growth and development (ODEOPE 1999). The mentor ensures that her life experiences and knowledge are passed onto her mentee. The support motivates and enhances her career (Heartfield and Gibson, 2005). Mentors are competent people who are approachable and reasonable by nature apart from their ardent commitment to their wards. Heartfield and Gibson have identified four themes in relationship to nurse mentoring in general practice (2005).

The mentor has to be qualified and experienced to choose the role of mentoring. The mentor and mentee must be accommodative to new relationships with cordiality. The mentee must be receptive to different mentors at different stages of her nursing journey. The infrastructure needs to promote equity in practice and provide workplace relief. Sound practice must be within ethical standards. Education must be a continuing process. The workplace must be flexible and conducive to professional development (Heartfield and Gibson, 2005).

Technology support has to be available. Mentoring programs allowed the sharing of knowledge, skills and values one had with a less experienced novice nurse (NLN, 2006). The mentor passed on a legacy or gift to the mentee. The nursing profession was strengthened and patient care was improved through this sharing mentality (Henk, 2005). A successful partnership was trust-based and each would be spending time and energy to allow it to grow. Soon the mentor became a role-model (Kuhl, 2005). Literature however did not provide sufficient evaluation of mentoring programs.

Future research has to focus on adequate evaluation of programs with appropriate variables. Cognitive and metacognitive skills needed to be developed for the appropriate clinical reasoning skill (Kuiper and Pesut, 2004). Self-regulated learning required these skills for reflective practice. An exhaustive survey of literature has found that reflective clinical reasoning depended on the acquiring of these skills (Kuiper and Pesut, 2004). The finding was that attention had to be provided to critical thinking and also to development of the metacognitive and cognitive skills for self-regulated reflective practice.

Both were closely interlinked. Future studies needed to focus on considering these separate mechanisms, which supported teaching and learning, together. Reflection if done purposefully was related to the adult learning theory (Cirocco, 2007). Issues could be understood with depth leading to the development of judgement and nursing skill. The critical thinking ability of nurses was examined by the College of Nurses of Ontario using a newly developed tool. All the 34 respondents were practicing reflection and 24 were using the new tool of which 19 claimed improvement.

The limitation was that clear definitions of critical