Assessing Self-Evaluation and Learning Needs - Essay Example

? Self Evaluation and Learning Needs Assessment The need to diagnose the gaps between the knowledge skills and attributes led to the urge to do a self-evaluation and detect the learning needs from the self-assessment done. Benner in her book, Novice to Expert (2001), describes how one could gain knowledge and skills through continuous exposure to practical knowledge especially in applied disciplines such as nursing. Through research, understanding and application of the findings and experiences gained, one is able to become well acquainted with a given subject. I was able to detect my learning needs through the novice to expert theory. I found out my weaknesses through consultation with fellow employees and patients. In addition, the self-analysis in my profession helped me in detecting my professional faults that need tightening. After the evaluation, I have learnt that knowledge and experiences are all around us; it takes a good deep look into our selves to tap it. Self-Evaluation and Learning Needs Assessment Learning needs assessment is the identification of gaps in knowledge, attributes and skills of a specific discipline that need improvement for proper delivery of services. This usually involves change of performance in order to improve quality. Learning needs assessment has been seen as a vital point for personal and professional development of all individual and organisations of all disciples. As a nurse who is a graduate of an associate degree program with a 20 years experience in medical-surgical nursing, I have felt a necessity to evaluate and identify my learning needs in order to become a better nurse. I developed an urge to evaluate myself during my experience as a nurse to level up with the best nursing services offered. With the evaluation of over 20 years, my pedigree of learning needs has been established for continuous professional development. As Benner (2001) says, learning to graduate from a registered nurse to an advanced practice nurse is a nerve wrecking activity, but not impossible. To become a graduate, I attended an associate degree program. I learnt a few general rules of nursing and was set off to work in a hospital. At that level, I stuck to rule governed behaviour because I knew then that it was inflexible and all the services and care I provided was orders passed down to me. This was normal for just from university or college student because, like Benner (2001) says in her book, being novice, like I was, meant I had no experience, the rules to nursing were context-free and were applied universally. Over the years though, I started gaining experience as an advanced beginner. I was then able to recognise recurring meaningful care components and started formulating principles because of the experiences I had gained in the short time and was able to demonstrate acceptable performance. Practising as a medical-surgical nurse requires one to be clean, neat, responsible and organised at all times. I had learnt this in school but had no experience to actualise the theoretical information until I started working as the main nurse for all surgical operations. This is when I understood why surgical tools should be sterilised and not just because the books say so. I had advanced as a beginner. After a 3 year experience working as a nurse, I became very analytical in terms of my thinking and choice of the best action to be taken based on experience and also became much aware of my long-term goals. According to Wakley and Steve (2000), I became a competent nurse with proper organisation and greater efficiency. Being a clinical nurse specialist entails educating patients and staff on proper care giving, identification of patients’ needs that require referral for more specialized care and attention, providing primary care to patients. Changing my practice and improving quality meant that I had to diagnose the individual problems that I had observed in myself and training on them to ensure continuity of professional development as a clinical nurse specialist. This requires learning needs assessment. I have been able to professionally grow as a nurse through gaining experience and this has supported me in self-development. Over the years I have dealt with giving care to patients but I have not entirely mastered or properly learnt the Standards of Practice for the Clinical Nurse Specialist in the practice of Adult Medicine and specialty area of Adult Health. I am able to understand the situation in my patients as a whole and I know what to expect under certain circumstances because of the experience but I have not narrowed down to understand the specialty of adult health. For instance, I need to learn how to provide night coverage for Acute Pain Service patients receiving catheters. Adult health involves treatment and care of young and old adults. Being able to learn this will enable me to promote adult health and staff education on adult health. The diseases or anomalies can be either chronic or acute. Learning these will improve the health system by the shared information and proper treatment of patients. One afternoon while I was changing the catheter of an old man at the hospital, I had an experience I wouldn’t dare forget. An old man asked me the long term benefit of proper care for adult patients. I straight away answered that the only reason for giving care is to achieve recovery. The old man was too smart and I felt there is more reason as to why patients are given proper attention and this is how this became my learning need. I decided to start interacting with experienced adult doctors and nurses and starting questioning everything in order to answer the old man. I later learnt it is to ensure quick recovery and save on costs. This was a reminder that I should expand my knowledge on adult health. Benner has described learning as a continuous exercise that is usually achieved through experience .Having been in the nursing profession for 20 years is enough to be able to gather enough information which can be applied in related circumstances. I have felt an urge to understand the standards of Practice for the Clinical Nurse Specialist in the practice of Adult Medicine. Working in the hospital with a wide range of age groups, from experience, has dictated that nurses like me should understand medicine as it relates to people from every age group. Standards are authoritative statements used by the nursing professionals to underscore the responsibilities for which practitioners are accountable. This is another crucial learning need I have to satisfy. Banner (2001) in her book has explained that different degrees of skills show principles of skilled nursing performance change in the perception of learners or circumstances as a whole rather than in bits; the nurses become participators rather than spectators from the experience and ability to use past evidence based experiences to guide their decision making. The use of past evidence is one point that clearly guides most experienced professionals. It is what most importantly guides their decision making. Every decision made in nursing has to be accounted for. As a clinical nurse specialist, I have to be involved in medication and medication prescription, which calls for extreme accountability in case of an underdose or overdose. To achieve this, I have to not only focus in order to learn that Standards are authoritative statements used by the nursing professions to describe the responsibilities for which practitioners are accountable, but also to ensure deeper professional learning that is not associated with any particular need is one way of learning what is to be done in case a practise is not predictable. Recently, our hospital did a nursing audit, a survey on patient satisfaction, risk assessment and morbidity patterns. This helped learn that in as much my application of knowledge on theoretical practices had greatly improved over the 20 years, it never stops at one level. Every day is a new experience with different patients who have different needs. I have learnt to assess myself through various methods such as looking back and reflecting on the performances that I have carried out in 20 years to discover instances where I could have done better and in which way. This is called experimental learning through reflection in action and reflection on action, where I had to note and record such identified weaknesses and strengths that I had to improve with more learning. Another method of learning needs assessment that I have used is peer review. Working with more experienced and less experienced equally in the nursing discipline helps you learn. After having the need to learn, I allowed a doctor who has been working in the same hospital for around 37years to assess my work and offer recommendation on what I should do to improve the quality of provided care (Grant 2011). I took six months allowing other nurses and doctors to assess my performance and provide advice to me on how to improve my performance through organisational strategies depending on the level of validity, reliability and acceptability. Sometimes, having an observer from the same discipline to give advice on ways of professional improvement cannot be as objective as it is expected. In my plan to find out my learning needs I got the manager of communication department to observe my performance while at work and advised on sections that needed learning for quality services provision. This facilitated me to see the need to lean on my areas of weakness from unbiased point of view which humanly is easy to trust (Grant 2011). The commonly used method of self-evaluation that I sued was gap discrepancy. This is where I allowed peers and objective testing on my performance depending on the intended competencies. Ever since I started practising as a nurse, I have always kept a medical journal, notebooks and diaries with me. The details of the diaries and notes were an account of how my days at the hospitals were, especially how I offered my service and where I was in need of going back to books to refer in order to ensure proper prescription or care is given. The feedback books available in hospitals were and still are a good source of feedback from the patients on the services provided (Alsop, 2000). I plan to learn and improve my weaknesses through integrating all the learning needs into training and learning routine in order to improve the nursing practice. I plan to learn by listening to patients, getting experience from attending to patients, listening to the discussions by medical or nursing experts and consultants and learning from interacting with fellow practitioners in order to learn. This will help in the building up of experience and knowledge in my areas of weaknesses. From working with doctors and nurses in 20 years, I have also learnt that correcting errors, learning clinical methods from practice and teaching by doing is one way of learning to strengthen my weakness. Furthermore, learning from what experts do like summarising and presentation of their work, ensuring that they get feedback from their patients and putting their patients at liberty to ask any matters of concern (Alsop 2000). The aim of my learning needs assessment was not to look for my incompetence but to look for my incompetence and discover how to strengthen it forms continuous learning for improved service. Bastable (2008) in the book on continuous professional development said that for health practitioners to ensure that they have the capability to practice effectively, legally and safely, they had to engage in activities to help them develop. This meant that I have to expose myself to learning and maintaining professionalism to benefit my patients. Watching role models and relating their work to my strengths and weaknesses will help me learn on improving the care given to patients. By looking into what I have learnt over the period of 20 years, how I learnt it and applying it in my day to day practicing is one way of ensuring efficiency in my field of practice. This, however, is a plan of how I plan to continuously learn and develop in order to provide quality care. References Alsop, A. (2000). Continuing professional development: A guide for therapists. Oxford: Blackwell Science. Bastable, S. B. (2008). Nurse as educator: Principles of teaching and learning for nursing practice. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett. Benner, P. E. (2001). From novice to expert: Excellence and power in clinical nursing practice. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall. Grant, J. (2011). The good CPD guide: A practical guide to managed continuing professional development in medicine. Radcliffe Pub. Wakley, G., Chambers, R., & Field, S. (2000). Continuing professional development in primary care: Making it happen. Abingdon: Radcliffe Medical. Robbins, S. P. (2009). Self-assessment library 3.4: Insights into your skills, interests and abilities. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Pearson/Prentice Hall. Read More