Reflective Report of Clinical Teaching Session - Essay Example

Reflective evaluation report of clinical teaching session including recommendations Introduction During the clinical education, the nursing students are required to perform various procedures such as giving intravenous medication along with a nursing professor. Learning how to give intravenous medication is one of the most important and basic care giving services. All the students should be taught how to properly give medication through intravenous under the supervision of a professor. Further, as in most cases intravenous is given to patients in an emergency situation or people who have undergone operations, the nurse need to extra attentive to the needs of the patient and follow all the instructions given by the physician (Conort et al., 2002). Thus, a nursing teacher needs to elaborate about the various conditions under which intravenous medication are needed to be administered. However, as clinical examination of all possible cases is not possible, therefore, the teacher should be efficient enough to cover the relevant cases during the classroom session or while undertaking similar cases during the clinical study. Further, the nurses should be made aware of the various side effects and negative impact of intravenous medication if administered in an incorrect manner. Clinical education is considered to be an important part of nursing practice as it provides practical knowledge and skills on how to take care of a patient. Administrating intravenous medication is an important step in nursing practice and hence, should be an imperative part of clinical education. As clinical education is imparted to help nurse provide patient care in a safe manner, teachers providing intravenous medication training should also be careful in their approach in teaching students how to carry out this procedure. Clinical education requires higher standard of teaching practice and therefore, the teachers should be conversant about various clinical theories and teaching models used in a clinical setting (Elliott, 2002). Some of these models and theories are discussed in the below mentioned sections. Further, the teacher needs to create a well-planned schedule for undertaking this module. The nursing professor should be able to identify the goals and the objectives of the clinical education, the process to undertake the module, monitoring of the intravenous medication activities, guiding the students, evaluating the procedure, accessing the students and providing them with learning outcomes. In this paper, the efficacy of such a teaching session is being described. The author has already created a teaching plan in the earlier assignment, which has been peer-reviewed. Based on the review provided by the peers and the analysis of the existing literature of various teaching models and theories, the author needs to find out the gap areas in his method of teaching and provide recommendations to address these areas. Literature Review Clinical education is considered to be an important part of the nursing curriculum. It helps the students in understanding the nursing theories and finally putting them into practice through first-hand experience and clinical-based practices. However, it is also difficult to monitor such a learning scenario, as the teachers are not sure of the possible cases that the student might undertake and therefore, it is difficult to predict about the outcome as well. This also results in difficulty to access the students’ performance during clinical studies. A study of the literature on the subject reveals that there are various strategies that the educator may employ to provide comprehensive clinical education to the students (McKenna & Wellard, 2009). The major aim of the clinical education is to give nursing students the opportunity to learn and attain skills to conduct initial patient care and integrate their theoretical learning with practical approach under the supervision of a nursing professional. Most of this clinical education is conducted on-site in hospitals on actual patients. Therefore, the responsibility of the nursing students also increases manifold, along with that of the supervisor. The student may shadow the supervisor during his or her daily duties and learn from the process. The supervisor on the other hand would monitor the progress of the student and access the student based on his or her knowledge, skills, ability to handle crisis situation, take independent decisions and provide quality care services (Schroeder, 1988). Learning is considered to be a continuous process and in a clinical setting especially, the nurses are required to learn from the everyday cases and by applying their knowledge through practical implementation. There are various ways through which learning can be implemented in the real life situation. The teachers are therefore required to understand these learning theories to teach the students according to their learning needs (Elliott, 2002). Some of these theories of clinical education are discussed in detail below to understand the current practices in clinical education. Behavioral Theories of Learning It has been found that behaviourism has influenced education in a greater manner. Various experts have propagated different theories about behaviourism. However, most of them have agreed that behaviour can be seen as a learned discipline and the environment in which a person operates manipulates his or her behaviour the most (Vandeveer, 2005). This same theory can also be implemented in the field of teaching administrating intravenous medication. In clinical education, behaviourism can play an important role as the behaviour of the student receiving the training can influence the learning outcome as well. Various experts have given different viewpoints about applying behaviourism in educating students. For instance, Bloom et al (1956) stated that the skill sets and intellectual abilities of the students should be recognised by the teacher through observations and thereafter, develop educational objectives as per the abilities of the students. Krathwohl (1956) on the other hand talked about the impact of behaviour in attaining knowledge. He stated that the emotion, attitude and prejudices of the students lead towards agreeing or rejecting a particular study module or theory. Understanding of these behavioural theories would help the teachers to develop the teaching module in such a manner that would take care of the learning requirements of the students. In this case as well, the students would have their own notions about administrating intravenous medication, which is mainly guided by their behaviour towards a particular information or teaching module. In case the student believes that intravenous medication is a very trivial patient care procedure, he or she might not pay proper attention to the process. In such a case, the teacher needs to install a sense of responsibility in the student and highlight the negative impact of incorrect administration of intravenous medication. The student should be made aware of the fact that an incorrect administration may result into the death of the patient, whereas a correct intravenous medication may save the life of the patient as well. Thus, it is the responsibility of the teacher to highlight the importance of the procedure in order to influence the behaviour of the student towards this module. Cognitive Theories of Learning Unlike behaviourism which is influence by the environment of the person, cognitive behaviour occurs due to the inner beliefs of a person. Cognitive theorists state that some of the important aspects of learning are the processes that involve acquisition, processing and structuring of given information (Braungart, 2003). This process particularly includes six types of cognitive learning, graded from a simple process to a complex one. These six types are application, knowledge, analysis, synthesis, comprehension and evaluation. Each of these types is further broken down into various other elements. For example, the element of knowledge can be further broken down specifying about the kind of knowledge gained, ways and means to gain knowledge etc. (Bloom et al., 1956). Thus, the teachers are required to develop appropriate learning objectives based on the cognitive theory prior to undertaking a module. This also helps in evaluating the progress of individual students (Roberta, 2003). In this case also, the teacher should understand the cognitive theory very well to find out how well the students are able to receive clinical education. The implementation of cognitive theories would help the teacher find out how the students are applying, analysing, synthesising, comprehending and evaluating the knowledge imparted during the module. Models, theories and principles of teaching and learning As clinical education is an important part of nursing practice, various models and theories have been propagated for the teachers to choose as per the requirements and needs of the students. Some models have been developed to generate ideas, while some to help in providing explanations or guiding in constructing a concept (Young & Paterson, 2007). Teachers need to be experienced enough to follow certain models and theories as per the current requirement. Some of the common modes of teaching used in clinical education are the traditional and constructivism models. It has been found that in most vocational classes, such as nursing and medication, teachers mostly use traditional methods of teaching. In this process, the teacher mainly decides on the components to be taught during the module and the learner has to be dependent on the teacher to understand the content and get future directions for the module (Paulman, 2001). Such a method of teaching is useful in developing mutual respect between the teacher and the student. This also helps in identifying the learning outcome from the module easily as the module is chartered by the teacher (Braunwald, 1997). However, this also requires greater degree of competence among the clinical education teachers, as the success of the entire module is dependent on the skills and judgment of the teacher (Gaberson, 1999). In the traditional model of teaching, the teachers are also required to motivate and facilitate learning among students by encouraging students to ask pertinent questions, to answer relevant queries and provide objective solutions during the sessions (McCarbe, 1985). The teacher not only need to stimulate learning among the students, but also have to be fair in his evaluation of the students as well as provide clear communication and timely feedback to the students (Nehring, 1990). In this case, the author has not put much emphasis on the traditional means of teaching and rather focused on providing innovating methods. Constructivism approach on the other hand considers teaching students based on new philosophies and visions. These visions are particularly focused on creating a patient-centric nursing practice, taking in view the latest developments in medical health. Unlike the traditional approach, in constructivist teaching, the student as well as the teacher equally partner together to construct the module content and develop their knowledge and skill sets together as they undertake various clinical cases (Bergum, 2003). In such a teaching module, the students are not just asked to implement the theories learned in the classroom, but also develop critical thinking and practice it in their areas. It is more of a collaborative learning rather than imposed teaching (Bevis, 2001). Although, this form of teaching has many advantages, it is also difficult to adopt such a teaching model. This model requires higher degree of collaboration between the students and the teacher. Further, as the module is not structured, the teacher might find it difficult to access the students at the end of the module. Further, the students are not experienced enough to undertake critical decisions and may get stuck at times. However, as this approach is at par with the current medical needs, the author decided to use this approach in his teaching module. Along with the constructivism approach, the author also used various innovative techniques such as group discussions, live demonstrations, return-demonstrations and role playing to encourage students to conduct the clinical studies confidently. Further, as the course focuses on administrating intravenous medication, the author took special care to monitor the students personally. The author accessed the process undertaken by each student and monitored whether the students were able to understand the dosage amount to be administered as per the age and medical status of the patient, whether the patient showed any symptom of speed shock, whether the patient was able to organise the entire activity in a proper manner etc. Recommendations for improving teaching strategies based on peer feedback and literature review Peer feedback Providing illustrations and examples: The author needs to provide illustrations and examples about how the students can use the theories in their clinical practice. The author should provide various case studies on how to administer IV medication in certain critical cases as it might not be possible to undertake all types of cases during the clinical study. It also gives prior information to the students about the cases they are going to handle during the module. Creating design features as per the current environment: The author should also create certain design features as per the current environment. Also, the teacher should take advantage of the various situations presented during the session. For instance, the teacher missed out on the opportunity to administer IV medication to an open heart surgery patient. Such a circumstance is rare and he should have used the opportunity to teach his students how to care for such critical patient. Providing challenging questions and case studies: This would help in developing the critical thinking process in the students. Defining all the concepts clearly: Although, the teacher touched upon most of the concepts in the module, the teacher was not able to define all the concepts properly. This might be due to the fact that there were too many concepts and the teacher only wanted to highlight on the important ones. However, in such cases as well, the concepts should be defined clearly with adequate examples, which were missing in this case. Further, the teacher did not present any alternate point of view in his presentation. He only provided a one-sided approach, which might not be always appropriate to the situation. Improving presentation skills: The teacher often used the words right and okay in his speech, which was distracting. A few of the students even lost their concentration due to the speech mannerism. The teacher was not maintaining constant eye contact with the students, which might show lack of confidence in the teacher. Further, his body language was also not matching with the oral message. The teacher appeared to be nervous while delivering the lecture. He needs to build up his confidence level and take classes to improve his presentation skills. Literature review analysis The teacher also needs to implement behavioural theories of learning and cognitive theories of learning in his teaching method. These theories would help the teacher is developing a module that would enhance the critical thinking process in the students. Further, along with the constructivism approach, the teacher should also use the traditional approach, which would help in structuring the module in a better manner as well as assessing the students’ performance during the clinical module. Reference: Bergum, V. (2003). Relational Pedagogy. Nursing Philosophy, 4, 121-128. Bloom, B., Engelhart, M., Furst, E., Hill, W., & Krathwohl, R. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: David McKay Company. Braungart, M. M., & Braungart, R. G. (2003). Applying learning theories to healthcare practice. In S.B. Bastable (Ed.), Nurse as educator: Principles of teaching and learning for nursing practice (2nd ed.), 43-71. Boston: Jones & Bartlett Publishers. Braunwald, Eugene & Antman, Elliott M. (1997). Evidence-Based Coronary Care. Annals of Internal Medicine, 126(7), 551-553. Conort, Ornella et al. (2002). Intravenous to oral conversion of fluoroquinolones: knowledge versus clinical practice patterns. Pharmacy World & Science, 24(2). Elliott, Malcolm (2002). Clinical education: A challenging component of undergraduate nursing education. Contemporary Nurse, 12(1), 69. Gaberson, K., & Oerman, M. (1999). Clinical Teaching Strategies in Nursing. London: Springer Publishing Company. Krathwohl, R., Bloom, B., & Masia, B. (1956). Taxonomy of Educational Objectives. New York: David McKay Company. McCabe, B. (1985). The Improvement of Instruction in the Clinical Area. Journal of Nursing Education, 24, 255-257. McKenna, Lisa & Wellard, Sally (2009). Mothering: an unacknowledged aspect of undergraduate clinical teachers’ work in nursing. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 14(2), 275-285. Nehring, V. (1990). Nursing and Clinical Teacher Effectiveness Inventory. Journals of Advenced Nursing, 15, 934-940. Paulman, M.,P., (2001). ‘For the Office-based Teacher of Family Medicine’. Journal of Family Medicine. 33(5). Pp344-346. Roberta, E. (2003). Nursing Education in Clinical Teaching. Sydney: Elsevier Health Sciences. Schroeder, Steven A. (1988). Expanding the site of clinical education. Journal of General Internal Medicine, 3(1). Vandeveer, M. & Norton, B. (2005). From Teachings to Learning. Philadelphia: Saunders. Young, L., & Paterson, B. (2007). Teaching Nursing: Developing A Student Centered Learning Environment. Philadelphia: Lippincott, Williams & Wilkins. Read More