A Critical Analysis Of Continual Professional Development In Nursing

This assignment will be based on continual professional development and will aim to identify a learning need encountered in my previous clinical placement. Through reflecting on my previous placement, I have identified that my lack of knowledge and organisation skills have impacted on my confidence and ability to hand over to qualified nurses. Therefore, the learning need I have identified involves improving my confidence, knowledge and organisation skills, in communication handover with qualified nurses.

I will provide a detailed critical analysis of the learning need and will reflect on the impact of the learning need on my professional development using the Johns model of structured reflection (Johns, 1995). I will then critically reflect and analyse how I met this practical learning need and how the change in practice relates to current, evidence based practice. I will continuously follow the Post-registration Education and Practice guidelines set by the Nursing and Midwifery Council (2011) and will also work in accordance with the NMC (2008) Code

Regrettably I left out vital information during the handover, causing my mentor to intervene and relay this information to the nurse. I noticed my mentor and the nurse looked quite disappointed in the poor attempt I had made at handing over, especially when the patient questioned my ability to practice as a student nurse. I felt both ashamed and disappointed that the therapeutic relationship between myself and the patient had been compromised, especially as a therapeutic relationship is known to be a major factor for delivery of excellent care (Chochinov et al, 2013). To ensure never to compromise care again I was aware that I needed to identify factors which had affected my performance when handing over, in order to change my current