The clinical journal is a tool to assist you in the development of appropriate clinical judgments by reflecting on your clinical practice, own behaviors, thoughts, and feelings. These will be reviewed by your clinical faculty and incorporated in your mid-term and final clinical evaluations. Given thought and honest self-evaluation, your journal will help guide you in your learning.Each journal should be typed and double-spaced, with correct grammar, spelling, and punctuation. Ideas should be organized and clearly communicated. The first paragraph should describe the clinical situation. It should include who was involved, what exactly happened, where did this occur, and when did this occur. The second paragraph is your analysis. This is a “thinking out loud” process that deals with reasons, motives and interpretation of your experience. Emotional responses are very telling so it is important to analyze how the situation made you feel. Some questions to think about when answering the analysis section are:How did the situation make you feel? What were you thinking at the time?How did you handle your reaction to the situation? What new things did you learn? In what way has this experience challenged your assumptions, prejudices, or biases? Discuss content area studied in the nursing program or in core courses that allowed you further knowledge or insight into the situation. In the third paragraph you need to reflect on your analysis and self-assessment. You want to determine the WHY. You might want to begin with “In retrospect I realize or When looking back I recognize that” Consider answering the following in this paragraph:How did this event impact you? This has taught me…Finally you want to improve your nursing practice. Look to the future and determine how you can use what you learnt and incorporate it into your personal life or nursing practice. Utilize these questions when developing this paragraph:How will you use the knowledge gained in the future? When a circumstance like this occurs again I will…? How will this experience alter your future behavior, attitudes, or career?Journaling Guidelines
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