Family Nurse Practitioner Practicum Experience Reflection: Relationship with Professional Goals and Clinical Skills Self-Assessment

Family Nurse Practitioner Practicum Experience Reflection: Relationship with Professional Goals and Clinical Skills Self-Assessment

The family nurse practitioner (FNP) role is an important one as we provide both curative and preventive health services to marginalised communities (Hu & Forgeron, 2018). To be precise, the FNP provides primary health care or PHC to the underserved and vulnerable populations in the US who do not have access to a physician.

In my practicum experience as a trainee FNP, I faced some challenges given that it is now that I am beginning to accumulate clinical skills in practicums. A particular patient encounter stands out for me. This was a 34 year-old female patient who came with a chief complaint of dizziness. After history taking and physical examination under the supervision of my preceptor, we reached a diagnosis of vestibular migraine. To me, this was the first time that I was beginning to relate theoretical clinical concepts to a real clinical situation. The challenge was immense. I found the synthesis of information from the history and the physical examination to arrive at a diagnosis a challenging but critical clinical skill. Furthermore, ruling out the other differential diagnoses proved to be an uphill task. I however quickly realised that the difficulty I was experiencing was because I had no clinical experience and still did not know how to manage my time in the clinical area (I spent an inordinate amount of time performing each task, like physical examination). From my preceptor, I learnt that in the clinical area I needed to consult other professionals like the physician if I had any difficulty. This effective communication is important (Vermeir et al., 2015). Luckily, I am inclined towards using only evidence-based interventions from my training (EBP) and practice integrity and honesty in following policies, standards of practice, and professional guidelines (Correa-de-Araujo, 2016; Poorchangizi et al., 2019). These attributes helped me a lot.

My professional goal is to be a FNP that uses evidence-based practice (EBP) to solve community health problems.

References

Correa-de-Araujo R. (2016). Evidence-Based Practice in the United States: Challenges, Progress, and Future Directions. Health Care for Women International, 37(1), 2–22. https://doi.org/10.1080/07399332.2015.1102269.

Hu, J., & Forgeron, P. (2018). Thinking, educating, acting: Developing advanced practice nursing. International Journal of Nursing Sciences, 5(2), 99–100. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.ijnss.2018.04.006.

Poorchangizi, B., Borhani, F., Abbaszadeh, A. et al. (2019). The importance of professional values from nursing students’ perspectives. BMC Nursing, 18(26). https://doi.org/10.1186/s12912-019-0351-1.

Vermeir, P., Vandijck, D., Degroote, S., Peleman, R., Verhaeghe, R., Mortier, E., Hallaert, G., Van Daele, S., Buylaert, W., & Vogelaers, D. (2015). Communication in healthcare: a narrative review of the literature and practical recommendations. International Journal of Clinical Practice, 69(11), 1257–1267. https://doi.org/10.1111/ijcp.12686.