Reflective Journal - Week 16

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

This week I learned about the important of risk management in our healthcare systems. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

I thought the discussion was helpful in putting myself in a specific situation of where risk management would be involved. It is helpful to understand what their roles are and what they could do in a specific situation to make something better. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I think it is important to remember that risk managers are there for us to be able to use them when needed. A lot of times, we don't utilize them as much as we should in some cases, when they can really benefit us from having further harmful outcomes to the facility that we work and our patients as well. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I feel that risk management is very important in nursing practice. I feel like they are great people to help us from bigger problems to help us in the overall problem becoming better. 

Reflective Journal - Week 15

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

I learned different ways in how to motivate employees, especially as a nurse manager. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

This has always been a passion of mine. I have worked on units that have really great employee retention and I try to take what they do and use it on other units that I work on. The problem I have noticed, is that managers aren't as passionate about it as I am and don't really consider it. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

Well one day when I am hopefully working as a nurse manager, I hope to adopt some of the practices that I believe so firmly in and also use some of the skills that were taught in this week's lecture. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I like the different ideas that discussed motivation techniques for employees. It was definitely important information for me to understand and hopefully be able to adopt in my practice one day. 

Reflective Journal - Week 13

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

I learned more about collective bargaining and how to better communicate with people. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

I thought the collective bargaining assignment was interesting. It was cool to see how things worked out based on the numbers I put in. I also enjoyed learning about different types of conflict and the different forms of communication. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I think this will be good information to know if I go into nursing management, so I will know what to purpose for raises to bosses. I also thought it was good to learn about the different forms of communication. Especially as a nurse leader it is good to know how to communicate properly to avoid conflict with my team.  

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I feel like this was really interesting information to learn. I think it will be valuable information to know in general and not just in my nursing practice. 

Reflective Journal - Week 12

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

This week I learned about strategic planning. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

This week it was good working at a team on the strategic planning assignment. I think it gave us all a great perspective on what strategic planning entails. We had to consider the big picture and what was best for the whole big picture. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

Since I plan on working in Nursing Management, I am sure I will at some point in my career be involved in strategic planning. This gave me a general overview on what that might be like in the future. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered. 

I feel this is valuable and important information for nurse leaders to be aware of. Strategic planning allows for much growth in organizations, and this should be brought to attention of those seeking those career opportunities in the future. 

Reflective Journal - Week 11

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

This week I learned about the importance of being able to accept change, especially as a leader. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

The team activities were hard to do this week. Everyone has such different schedules outside of school, so it was hard getting all of the team assignments done this week as a team. I also notice that people in my team tend to procrastinate, for me, I don't like to pinch everything in the last second. So it can be stressful. But I believe that this goes along with the lesson. To make a good leader, we need to be able to accept change, and if procrastination means changing some of my ways, then I had good practice in that this week. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I will take what I learned about changes and being able to adapt to them and be a leader with new changes instead of being a "Haw," in Who Moved My Cheese?

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I feel like I am a person that adapts to change fairly easily. I know that changes are generally for the better, so I try to look at changes from that light. I feel that nursing is a forever changing profession, and it is something that nurses should be able to do. Change is a quality that every nurse should have to best at their profession. 

Reflective Journal - Week 10

1. What did you actually learned from the unit.

I learned about staffing and how difficult it is. I also learned about nursing career development, and what steps it takes to continue career goals. 

2. Discuss your feelings/experiences from the team activities? Did it change your opinion on the subject? If so, how? If not, why?

The team activity of the staffing assignment was hard. It was hard putting 4 heads together to put up a decent schedule. It wasn't super organized by doing it that way. What I realized is that it really ultimately needs to really only involve one person to think hard about it and figure it out, because if you put too many cooks in the kitchen, per se, it is ultimate chaos trying to accomplish the ending goal. 

3. How you will utilize the information learned in your nursing practice.

I learned to appreciate more what it takes to develop a schedule. Luckily we didn't have staff complaining about it either. That could make it even more hard. But it is more important to meet the demands of the unit. 

4. You personal feelings about the material covered.

I learned the importance of PRN staff to be used especially when they are needed to fill in the gaps in the schedule. I worked for a unit once that refused to allow me to go to PRN status to meet the demands of my family. So I reached out to my old boss who allowed me to come back and work for her as PRN. After completing this week's activities, I realized that it is important to have that filler staff to ensure that the gaps can be filled when necessary. 

Budget Interview

For this assignment I interviewed my brother-in-law who does the budgeting for his CFO for Vivnt Solar. He is a business analyst and works on all of the budgeting for the company. It was really interesting to hear everything he had to share in regards to the budgeting for the company. He knows how much everyone makes and knows what cuts they decide to make as he works hand in hand with the CFO of the company. It was interesting to hear everything that goes into the budget of a large successful company.