Essay On Reflective Practice

INTRODUCTION
This paper aims to highlight an incident in theatre where environmental pressure has the tendency to lead to human error thereby compromising the patient’s safety. To reflect and critically analyse the situation, human factors, theories, guidelines and national policies that govern a theatre environment so as to improve the practice, raise awareness and prevent adverse event thereby improving patient safety in theatres.
Nurses are constantly being encouraged to be reflective practitioners (Sommerville and Keeling, 2004). Reflective practice can be defined as the process of making sense of events, situations and actions that occur in the workplace (Oelofsen, 2012; Boros, 2009) It helps the practitioner in thinking and examining his actions and behaviour thereby, aids in his learning and improvement. Reflective practice is important for nurses. The NMC Code (2002) states that nurses are responsible for providing care to the best of their ability to patients and their families. As nurses, according to Sommerville and Keeling (2004), they need to focus on their knowledge, skills and behaviour to ensure that they are able to meet the demands made on them by this commitment. Identifying strengths enable nurses to learn, develop and grow professionally.
A suggestion made by Schon (1991) states that there are two fundamental forms of reflection: reflection-on-action and reflection-in-action. He further defined Reflection-in-action as a means of examining one’s own behaviour and that of others while in a situation (Schon, 1995, 1987). However, Grant and Greene (2001) and Revans (1998), defined reflection-on-action as focusing on identifying negative aspects of personal behaviour with a view to improving professional comp...

... middle of paper ...

...ry.
Furthermore, the circulating person should have kept the bowl liner inside the theatre until the operation’s completed, and the final count was undertaken and everything that was accounted for at the beginning of the case were out. The local trust policy (c) (2012) states that at no time should laundry, orange-bagged clinical waste, and non- clinical waste containers including suction liners leave the theatre. In line with the infection control standard precautions, the fluid that was taken in the sluice should have been sucked via suction tubing to the suction liner. The NICE (2012) guideline states that health- care-associated infections are caused by wide range of microorganisms. These are often carried by the patients themselves, and have taken advantage of a route into the body provided by an invasive device or procedure.