Scenario
You are a nursing student in a BSN Program, currently enrolled in a Leadership course. As part of your current immersion experience, you are working with the charge nurse in the operating room. In pre-op on the first day of this clinical experience, you observe an upset client refusing to sign a surgery consent unless a small religious object could accompany him and stay attached to his body. This object is a key component of his cultural beliefs, and he will cancel the surgery if he is unable to keep the religious object attached to his body. The charge nurse states, “Let me check and see what we can do, I will need a bit of time to collaborate with others and see if we can identify a solution.” You observe the charge nurse gather a team of nurses in the pre-op area and begin reviewing the policy and procedure manuals for the facility to determine if a solution can be identified to allow the object to be taken into the operating room. While the healthcare team was looking for a solution, someone recommended that the object is wrapped in non-conductive material, and applied to the client under a sterile dressing. According to policy, this would work with Surgeon approval.
Instructions
In post-conference, you debrief with a faculty member and discuss this powerful example of healthcare team members working together to support and respect a client’s unique cultural needs and belief system. The clinical faculty tells you to complete a clinical journal entry which describes the process involved in this example of professional practice. Include the following in your journal entry:
Explain how relational inquiry was applied in this situation to promote the process of clinical reasoning.
From context and culture
Optimization of health and well-being
Collaborating across differences
Do you believe this action was appropriate, and why or why not?
Provide a supporting argument to defend choice for appropriate or non-appropriate response by the nurse and include personal biases.