Competency Four
The ability to provide a safe, therapeutic and healing environment for infants, children, youth, and families.
My service dialogue demonstrates my ability to interact with patients in a way that promotes a safe and therapeutic healing environment. The scenario I created was using medical play to explain chemotherapy to a nine year old girl and her sister. When interacting with patients it is important to assess them before, during, and after the interaction so adjusts can be made to any coping or treatment plans to promote healthy coping. For this assignment I assessed the patient before our interaction so I could plan for what interventions I wanted to use, and if this scenario were real, I would make mental notes of the things she seems interested/uninterested in. All of these things can help me meet my first professional goal in my future career.
For this discussion our class was given a scenario where a four year old was coming into an outpatient clinic for a blood draw. In the past, the boy had struggled with anxiety regarding the procedure and had to be restrained by nurses. I offered several solutions to reduce anxiety such as suggesting a comfort hold in one parent's lap while the other parent uses bubbles or an iPad as a diversion. By giving the patients parents a job, they are able to feel more in control, minimizing their stress and the patients as well. Additionally, I would offer the patient choices whenever possible to give him some autonomy, as well as assigning him jobs when appropriate such as "helping "the nurse by blowing on his skin after sterilizing it. All of these interventions work to create and safe and healing environment for families. Using interventions such as these can help minimize the use of sedatives for certain procedures; matching my third research goal