Post service learning is an important part of nursing profession. It provides experiential learning approaches for nurses by incorporating community support forums and academic medical models for easy application in care and disease management. After professional knowledge is gained, it is significant that the information is integrated with community needs to attain a holistic learning environment and achieve better experience. The service learning helped me to gain pragmatic experience to provide enhanced nursing care to patients within unfortunate circumstances. Additionally, it helped me to build traits, such as communication and interpersonal skills that are essential in working with the community and when providing nursing care to the patients. The nursing practice is based on care for the patients and the less fortunate in the society. Therefore, the service learning was critical in building my psychological preparedness to deal with the under privilege members of the community. Accordingly, the program also helped me in sharpening my interaction skills and integrating my nursing knowledge by practically applying it for the enhanced benefit ofless privileged. Although the nursing profession employs an integrated model of imparting knowledge, service learning enhances preparedness when rendering effective service for patients both in and out of healthcare facilities.
Nutrition for Health care-NUR 2100
Nutrition for healthcare is an integral nursing course that focuses on the maintenance and promotion of an individual needs throughout his or her lifespan. It is a key component of promoting safe health practices across the community. There is a correlation between dietary intake and the susceptibility to disease. It is significant that nutritional epidemiology is managed through intervention of preventive mechanisms discussed in the nursing course. Effective nutrition is important for healthcare workers who are focused on enhancing their lifestyles. Therefore, the effectiveness of services offered by a professional nurse is influenced by nutritional exposure related to the quality of foods consumed by the patient.
A balanced diet entails consumption of food with concentration of micronutrients and macronutrients. The macronutrients are clustered into three subcategories of proteins, carbohydrates, and fats as essential to the body needs. Whilst the micronutrients are minerals and vitamins that exist in larger quantities in the foods consumed. Dietary practice of a balanced diet is important for proper functioning of the body and helps in managing diseases. Accordingly, appropriate nutritional trends provide the human body with necessary protection systems, energy, and the preparedness to fight infections. The consumption of a well-balanced diet supports nursing care in combating disease and enhancing the healing process. The treatment models applied to the patients can respond efficiently and lead to better clinical practices. Hence, a balanced diet plays a critical role in the nursing profession since it supports healing and reduces the chances of infections.
Poor nutrition has adverse effects on the community. Consumption of food rich in calories and reduced physical activities are related lifestyle diseases. For example, Kenny et al. (2018) illustrate that lifestyle illnesses, such as obesity, diabetis, and some cases of cancer have origins from poor nutritional practices (p. 8). Such challenges have severe health implications since they deter proper functioning of the body and lead to organ’s failure, causing more damage to individuals’ health. Notably, they also compound the attainment of the benefits of nursing care and may occasion to early death. Therefore, the nursing profession imparts nutrition information to the community to manage diseases and any other sporadic outbreaks of infections.
Mercy and Jesuit Traditions
The McAuley School of Nursing Philosophy statement promotes a value-based education principle that stimulates spiritual, social, intellectual, and psychological development of a learner. The commitment of the course is to support a program that opens up discourses and services with the community through the integration of pedagogies that enhance reflections on the human experience. Blomberg et al. (2016) illustrate that, compassion is an essential element in the nursing profession since it determines the quality of care (p. 138). Therefore, the Mercy and Jesuit tradition encourages students to work together within a community of varied cultural diversities, ethnic backgrounds, racial, and socioeconomic statuses for growth, thereby improving the quality of the care. The characteristics of spiritual and social approaches to learning are significant and exemplify a Mercy and Jesuit nursing graduate. Moreover, the model assists in gaining practical insights on how to apply compassion elements of the nursing course to the community.
The service experience enabled me to understand the characteristics of spiritual and social interaction models of the Mercy and Jesuit model. The philosophies have helped me to experience the application and practice of the nursing code of preferential treatment for the under privileged members of the community. Nurses are expected to provide services to destitute as a fundamental function in the course of their assignment. Therefore, the service experience has enabled me to understand how to align my aspirations in nursing service to the less fortunate.. According Blomberg et al. (2016), compassionate nursing care provides dignity, emotional care, and moral attributes that responds to the needs of a patient (p. 138). The service experience has invigorated my behavioral traits and attitude in provide service through social interaction with the needy and thereby providing compassionate care. The service learning was significant to me since it helped in building practical experience and managing an interconnection between theory and practice through philanthropic works to the under privileged populations.
Conclusion
Service learning is an important tool in achieving practical experience for nursing students. The interactions with the community members was significant in attaining better social practices and gaining knowledge and information on how to handle cases related to people from varied socioeconomic backgrounds within the healthcare systems. After the service learning and interactions session, I realized that the communication and interpersonal skills were vital when working within the community. I also realized that professional knowledge could be applied better using soft skills that bring higher connections between professionals and the destitute in the society. Since the applications of the nursing models of care are determined by the levels of acceptance and cooperation from the patients, the model helps me to underpin coping mechanisms for future application. It was a great experience and I benefited immensely from the activity.
References
Blomberg, K., Griffiths, P., Wengström, Y., May, C., & Bridges, J. (2016). Interventions for compassionate nursing care: A systematic review. International Journal of Nursing Studies, 62, 137-155. doi: 10.1016/j.ijnurstu.2016.07.009
Kenny, T. A., Fillion, M., MacLean, J., Wesche, S. D., & Chan, H. M. (2018). Calories are cheap, nutrients are expensive–The challenge of healthy living in Arctic communities. Food Policy, 80, 39-54. doi: 10.1016/j.foodpol.2018.08.006