The past six months have been truly instrumental towards implementing my knowledge through the Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BS) Program. Among the many things I’ve learned in my current position at the long-term care facility is the need to have people skills and show compassion to others. I have shown a great level of improvement in understanding patient needs, being reliable, flexible and accommodating the constant change in patient needs. As a nurse coordinator in the nursing home, I’ve learned to employ the strategy of constant and effective communication with my team and this has helped me grow in my areas of weakness.
Time management skills have also been my greatest strength. As I schedule nurses shifts and their tasks, I’m able to easily ensure that the patients receive quality care from my team. Similarly, I have also had a chance to learn two important things about long-term care. One of them is the fact that, long-term care patients need their caregivers to empathize with them and support them unconditionally. The second thing that I learned is that my team works well when they know that they can trust me to make the difficult but right decisions. This is also associated with being honest in supporting them and learning from them as well.
Although I perform well as a nurse coordinator, the one thing that I would like to improve on is delegation of tasks to other nurses. At times I prefer handling most tasks on my own, however I believe delegation will also show my team that I trust them with their skills and the ability to perform their jobs adequately. This will also be important because working as a team gets swift and accurate results.
