Nursing and Midwifery Mentor Bulletin

In the future, I could have informed my mentor as quickly as possible. If my mentor was not around I could have informed the nearest nurse about what is going on in order to prevent the incident from becoming worse. I will also look at the eight principles of nursing practice (these are principles that were developed by Royal College of Nursing) having great knowledge of these practices are extremely important to provide effective care (RCN, 2018). I will also look at ways to communicate with patients effectively in order to deal with this kind of situation effectively. Furthermore, I could have also supported the patient’s carer by letting them know that help is on the way.

Looking back on this incident, I can see that I should have dealt with the situation as quickly as possible by calling the nurses. If possible, I should have encouraged the patient to return to the ward by using good communication skills such as maintaining eye contact and effective listening skills. I should have also discussed the incident with my mentor in order to know what I can do if it happens again in the future.

During the incident, I tried my best not to panic otherwise I would have made the situation worse. I went to inform the nurses, but this took me a while as I couldn’t find my mentor but I managed to get another nurse to deal with the incident. When this incident occurred, one of the patients asked me what was going on but I maintained confidentiality by telling the patient that I wasn’t too sure (NMC.org.uk, 2015).

The thing that I have learnt during the incident is how to deal with challenging behaviour. I learnt this through observing one of the nurses when they had to deal with this patient attempting to leave the ward. I noticed that the nurse remained calm at all times and maintained good eye contact when trying to deal with this patient. I did, however, find the incident extremely daunting as I was the first person to witness the patient trying to leave the ward. I was quite unsure and afraid of how to deal with the situation and I didn’t act as quickly as possible as I was confused.

The main emotion I felt throughout this incident was scared. This is because I did not expect this to happen on my first day of placement visit. I became very aware of my own safety as her reactions were quite unpredictable. I also felt sympathy for the patient because she has depression. The NHS states that there are about 10% young people self-harms and self-harm is linked to depression. (NHS, 2015)

During my first placement visit, I observed a fourteen year old patient who was admitted to the children’s ward because she overdosed paracetamol. Her emotional distress caused her to leave the ward unattended. Most of the nurses struggled to get the patient back into the ward as she was very aggressive.