Reflecting On The Importance Of Oral Hygiene Nursing Essay

Reflecting On The Importance Of Oral Hygiene Nursing Essay The care of a patients mouth forms an important component of assisting hygiene needs and yet is an aspect of practice which is not always afforded the attention it fully deserves. It is also a role which too often delegated to health care assistants. Research shows that, in the United States, nosocomial pneumonia ranks second in morbidity and first in mortality among nosocomial infections. The treatment of nosocomial pneumonia adds 5 to 7 days to the hospital stay of surviving patients and billions of dollars to healthcare costs. REFLECTION There are different models of reflection one of which is Gibbs (1988). Reflection is the process of reviewing an experience in order to describe, analyses, evaluate and so inform learning about practice (Reid1993). I will use this reflection model in guiding me because it has helped focusing on different aspects of an experience, and exploiting their full potential for learning will be more appreciated. Reflection in professional practice, however, gives back not what it is, but what might be, an improvement on the original (Moon 1999). Description As part of placement simulation, I was part of a group introduced to oral hygiene care. It is one of the core requirements in maintaining the hygiene needs of a patient. When we were told to bring in a towel and tooth brush, I was taken aback as to what was the need for them? I went to the multi-skills laboratory not knowing what will befall me. My lecturer introduced us to a range of chemicals for oral hygiene. I had used some before but on this occasion, there was one I had not tried and used before. I was assigned a colleague to have the opportunity of experiencing the giving and receiving of oral hygiene by cleaning his teeth with toothbrush and pepsodent and vice versa.We performed as instructed. Feelings Upon commencement of activity, my views of healthy oral care were not very clear to me. Generally I perceived cleaning your teeth as being much like washing a face. I felt very embarrassed and inadequate and consequently, felt very uncomfortable as I have not done this to anyone outside of my family. On his part, it was obvious from his reaction that he had no confidence in me, thinking I was going to brush his teeth hard. It highlighted the complex problems I have to solve in practice and the provision of care needs to patients for whom I may not have had contact with before. I thought my pride and dignity had been taken away from me but later felt comfortable having understood what it was generally. Critical Analysis Helping patients/service users to meet their hygiene needs is a fundamental component of nursing care. Again, helping patients to meet their personal hygiene needs provides any nurse with an ideal opportunity to undertake a thorough physical, emotional and cognitive assessment of the patient. Although it seemed difficult at the beginning, by the time we performed on each other for the third time with encouragement we had developed a good working relationship. Encouraging students to acknowledge their intuitive capacity helps them to appreciate their strengths and weaknesses (SWOT). Jasper (2003) regards SWOT analysis as getting to know yourself. The understanding of our skills and abilities and the awareness of where our limits lie is seen as crucial to being able to act as a professional practitioner. After identifying and analyzing of my own strengths, weaknesses, opportunities and threats, I showed no more discomfort and shown more interest in the activity as our lecturer continued talked us through. Jackson and Mannix (2001) note that amount of interest the nurse shows in the learning needs of the student and the key role he or she plays in their achievement are essential to the students development. It is strange that sometimes you do things or know what things are without ever really stopping and analysing it. Most students and many professionals note that learning acquired from placement experience is much more meaningful and relevant than that acquired in the lecture room (Quinn 2000). Boud et al 1985 argue: it is common for reflection to be treated as if it were an intellectual exercise a simple matter of thinking rigorously. However, reflection is not solely a cognitive process; emotions are central to all learning. Conclusion Caring for a patient requires a relationship and empathy. By developing collaborative relationship with patients, I can provide prompt and focused interventions which can limit illness. Action Plan My aim is to be proactive in the future by promptly opening up. I aim to develop the skill of emotional resilience to be able to deliver and receive any care. Conclusion Like many others on the group, I thought that students were there through choice, they wanted to learn. As a result of this I expected the group to be mature and behaved. Due to my lack of experience in care and the job title of student nurse, I perceived that most sessions would run in a lecture format. This was probably a very naive move on my part, however following my first two sessions, I realised that if I was to be a successful student nurse, I had to adapt my approach. I needed to focus more upon my involvement and participation, getting the group involved in sessions would help to improve my learning process. However as I develop my nursing skills and also my ability to reflect, I have begun to realise that the process of reflection is more complex than Gibbs (1988) suggests. Whilst Gibbs highlights key areas of the process, I feel that reflection is not as cyclical as this model implies. As my reflective skills develop, I am finding myself jumping some stages of the cycle, revisiting others and in some instances digressing in different directions. I feel that this represents my views of reflection as I have a start point (the experience) and an end point (the outcomes/actions), but how I get there is down to my trail of thought. Whilst at this stage of my development I would not class myself as a successful, I believe I am working to develop the skills required to be successful.

Should America and Canada Have a Common Economy

People have always wondered what it would be like to step in the shoes of others – people that are completely different from them and see the differences and similarities in their lives. These days even countries are thinking of the same question. For example, what if, Canada started sharing its economy with the US? Canada and the United States have different economic systems even though the countries are geographically close to each other. In the economic continuum of planned, mixed and market economies, Canada has a mixed economy, and U. S has a market economy. Generally speaking, Canadians and Americans are very different people. Creating a single economy could have disastrous effects on the lives of the people and should not be done. First off, with less government involvement Canada would no longer have the things that Canadians celebrate. Secondly, the switch would go down hard on the homeless people of Canada who would now not have the government help that they desperately need and in a colder climate like that of Canada, it would be very hard for them to survive with the new economy not helping them much. And lastly, Canada already has the North American Free Trade Agreement which gives Canada, good cooperation with the United States and obviates the necessity of such a move. If the Canadian economy integrated into the American economy, the future of Canada would be destined to collapse because of the things that the people would lose. At the moment, Canada is a welfare state, where there are things such as senior pension plans, free healthcare and free education from K-12. If the economy converted, these would be no more. That would lead to the start of these services being commercialized which would make the prices skyrocket (refer to figure 1). Cost of living would go up. Health conditions would deteriorate and the workforce would not be as skilled due to higher cost of education. Also immigrant and refugee population would drop. That will adversely affect Canada's workforce. To sum up, the Canadian economy will suffer heavily. In the United States, the government, leaves much of the economy to the private sector and this leads to a higher cost of living. To the homeless people of Canada this is bad news. First of all, Canadian homeless people live in a very cold climate where they have to buy winter jackets and such. With a higher cost, the homeless people simply cannot afford the all the things to survive winter and will have lots of problems. This would add approximately 300,000 homeless protesters that would go against the integration along with the others that want free healthcare back and would cause big problems to the government. In 1994, The North American Free Trade Association started to be implemented and free trade started between Canada, America and Mexico. Canada has the NAFTA (North American Free Trade Association) that makes Canada, United States and Mexico very good cooperative nations and together they have made the largest free trade area. [1] John McCain from the Republican party[5] said â€Å"Last year alone, we (U. S. ) exchanged some 560 billion dollars in goods, and Canada is the leading export market for 36 of the 50 United States. [2] The countries have agreed to many things that they will do for each other such as strengthen the special bonds of friendship and cooperation among their nations, contribute to the harmonious development and expansion of world trade and provide a catalyst to broader international cooperation and many more things[3] NAFTA has created a very strong foundation for future and created good cooperation for the three economies. So why does Canada need to share economies? In fact, what Canada gets from it, is not worth the expenses and risks it faces during the transition. So as a summary, making such an integration possible could lead to devastation, and a lot of struggle for the people. So this should not be done. Making the switch, takes away the joys that we celebrate such as free healthcare and makes big problems in the lives of people that depend on these services. This also raises the prices of the goods in the market making a problem for not only the common people but even more drastically for the homeless people of Canada. Also, due to NAFTA, we have very good cooperation with the United States. Is all this really worth the change? Are we going to get enough back by doing this change?

Arguments for and against using Utilitarian principles Essay

Utilitarianism is an ethical theory that proclaims that the morally right course of action in any given situation is the one that produces the greatest amount of pleasure over pain for everyone affected (Ferrell, Fraedrich &Ferrell 2008). This is evident in business decision making processes done by analysts, legislators and managers, for instance on deciding to invest resources in public project, to minimize cost by using foreign labors and such. Thus, the argument on whether utilitarian principles should be applied in workplace practices is highly debated as it carries both pros and cons. First and foremost, utilitarianism in an organizational context â€Å"provides a clear and straightforward basis (Shaw, Barry & Sansbury 2009, p67)† for developing and testing guidelines and protocols. Pain and pleasure is graded in a scale of continuum to measure intensity of the emotion (Burns 2005). As such, organizations can utilize this to derive objective decisions, as the approach uses quantitative result oriented method, and calculates cost and benefit of the consequences of all possible alternatives. For instance, a departmental manager ordered to cut cost in his department may revise all employees’ salary in the interest of obtaining higher utility for all parties rather than lay off some staff. Secondly, utilitarianism enables an unbiased approach of decision making, thus a way to resolve conflicts involving self-interest (Mill, 1863). This approach requires the decision maker to take the standpoint of an impartial third party and give equal weightage to everyone’s interest. As such, the outcome of the decision will not be influenced by self interest and chances of negative implication to all individual are minimized. This is advantages, as incidents such as Bhopal Disaster that killed 20000, as a result of poor maintenance to minimize cost for the shareholders, could be evaded. Moreover, utilitarianism is a comprehensive and flexible method as it looks at the end results of actions and takes into consideration the complexity of the circumstances (Burns 2005, p46). All ramifications, regardless whether they are direct, indirect, long term or short term, are taken into account especially in situations that may have long term environmental and health implication. Thus using utilitarianism, organizations can reach â€Å"realistic and workable moral decisions (Shaw, Barry & Sansbury 2009, p67)†. Nonetheless, there are criticisms against the utilitarianism approach as it is difficult to determine and account for all foreseeable benefit and harm of every possible alternative (De George 2013, p48). This is because we cannot know the full implication of all actions in the long term, nor can we accurately estimate the pain and pleasure of future consequences resulting from these actions. For example, a drug that was released into market after thorough research and careful consideration of benefit over harm, could have undiscovered lethal side effect that could manifest many years later. However, due to limited technological advancement when the research was conducted, this potential harm and its intensity may not be identified accurately during initial cost and benefit analysis. Furthermore, utilitarianism is a teleological theory that looks at the end result itself rather than action. As such, it isn’t concerned with how the utility is achieved and even morally reprehensible actions such as theft and murder could be considered ethically right as long it produces more utility (Shaw, Barry & Sansbury 2009, p68)†.Moreover, the theory, though theoretically plausible, is not applicable in real life situations in which individuals are required to make decision within minutes and could not possibly consider all alternatives and their implications. In conclusion, utilitarianism though highly applicable to workplace, should be practiced with caution as it also has weaknesses like any other theory. As such, the individuals in decision making position, should be aware of potential biases and shortcomings of practicing utilitarianism and attempt to diminish the negative implications. Reference List Burns,J 2005, â€Å"Happiness and Utility: Jeremy Bentham’s Equation† Utilitarianism Resources. P46,accessed 27/08/2013, http://www.utilitarianism.com. De George, R 2013, Business Ethics, Pearson/Prentice Publication, New Jersey. Ferrell,O , Fraedrich, J& Ferrell,L 2008, Business Ethics : Ethical Decision Making and Cases ,South- Western Publication, Mason. Mill, J 1863, Utiilitarianism , Utilitarianism Resources. Accessed 27/08/2013, http://www.utilitarianism.com/mill2.html. Shaw,w, Barry,V & Sansbury,G 2009 Moral Issues in Business, Cengage Learning Australia, South Melbourne.

Global Warming A Catastrophic Situation - 1956 Words

Global Warming: A Catastrophic Situation Within the last fifty years, global temperature has increased significantly faster than the past 650,000 years. In the next one hundred years, the global temperature is supposed to rise by three to nine degrees. This may not seem like such a big change however, with a rise in temperature, many negative consequences will being to show. Some of these consequences include but are not limited to destroying the O-zone, increase in disease, powerful weather disasters, rising sea levels, and overall decrease in health for all things living on Earth. If people do not become informed by the consequences of what they do every day, humans may no longer have a planet to call home. Starting from the outside†¦show more content†¦However, with Earth’s surface creating more heat, it causes the atmosphere to become cold. Similar to a human wound, the O-zone will not be able to repair itself quickly when cold (Baker, M.). With the hole not bein g able to repair quickly, harmful rays from the sun are able to reach Earth’s surface and create more harmful heat. This is very similar to a double-sided sword. Global warming will heat the surface causing the O-zone hole to be continuous, and in turn, the rays coming in from the O-zone will continue to heat Earth’s surface (Climate Change: Basic Information.). If Earth’s surface is warmed enough, it will also start to warm the bodies of water. The heating waters are currently the reasons for the melting of ice shelves. Luckily, the ice shelf melting is not as serious due to the water flowing and refreezing (Global Climate Change: Research Explorer†). However if the ice shelves are melting too fast then that could cause complete changes in glaciers and the land mass in general. With the loss of land mass from mainly Antarctica, it means a rise in sea levels. Some think that a rise in sea levels would not be bad however; the most important major cities in the United States are located in areas directly beside the sea. There are also cities that are under water, however, due to a more elevated land masses protecting it, these cities are do not feel an impact currently.