Health History Reflection

Today at clinicals, I performed health history on a patient. Before starting the day, our preceptor went over our objective, before gathering to listen to the nurse’s hand over. At the end of the hand over, I volunteered to pray. This is the first time I was asked to I say a pray in the presence of the nurses on shift. I was nervous throughout the entire pray, but, nevertheless I was happy to be able to pray of our behalf.

Today’s focus was on culture and communication.We were placed in pairs to interview and take health history on a patient. As usual, we have adapted Nightingal’s theory into our routine, and as a student nurse, this theory together with Hildegard’s theory is very easy to pick up and easy to implement in our nursing care in clinical every Thursday. Ensuring that the environment is safe, practicing safety checks, gathering necessary equipments, and washing our hands before we go to our patient, is a top priority. This has now become a habit for me every Thursday. Before we went by our patient, we took a moment to listen the doctor’s rounds. We gathered around, as the doctors were by a patient’s bedside. That patient had

I introduced myself to the patient and told the patient what I was going to do. I used Peplau’s theory to build up nurse-patient relationship. During my health history, I asked open ended questions to encourage the patient to talk and ask questions. I took into consideration the patient religious view, avoided stereotyping and pause at intervals. I had to consider the patient’s educational level and use words that can be understood. My facial expression, posture and eyes had to be pleasant so that it does not interfere with interpersonal skills in comparison to previous experiences. I had to exercise Leininger’s theory of care, the patient being the central theme of nursing care. We concluded the health history by ensuring confidentiality according to HIPPA’s