WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
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Module Overview
As an advanced professional nurse, it is essential that you engage in self-care to avoid burnout and emotional exhaustion and to promote professional development. A major aspect of understanding self-care is self-assessment, as you cannot fix something until you identify the need for change. Taking care of oneself is different for every nurse; therefore, a self-evaluation will help you understand how you care for yourself and the activities you engage in routinely that contribute to your physical health and emotional well-being. You must be honest with yourself and identify self-care deficits so you can develop a meaningful plan for improvement. For example, if your assessment reveals that exercise is a deficit, creating a plan for engaging in planned physical activity may be part of your action plan. If you are emotionally drained, you may need to seek counseling or simply talk to someone you trust to decrease the worry and stress in your life; for example, debriefing with your team can be helpful. In all cases, you must engage in an honest self-evaluation of where you are and where you want to be in the future. And, no matter what aspect of your life is not in balance, there are actions you can take to improve your health and happiness. WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
You have enrolled in a master’s-level nursing program to advance in the profession; however, accomplishing your end goal of advancing your career will not happen unless you begin by completing a mindful self-assessment that will provide insight into how well you care for yourself. Intentional introspection means you purposefully and routinely engage in self-examination by critically looking at your own behaviors, personality, and actions, and considering your motivations. It is an attempt to try and understand why you feel the way you feel. There must be a conscious effort to look inward to understand the choices you make and your impact on the feelings of others.
Descriptive and normative ethics drive your understanding of the attitudes and actions held by those in the systems you are engaged in. You must understand the logical processes and subsequent movements occurring in your professional domains in order to ethically and morally engage with your career communities and teams. Ongoing intentional reflection of professionalism prompts the development of the strengths needed for successfully contributing to workplace integrity. In this module, you will evaluate the role of self-assessment in exploring professional development needs. Meaningful recognition in the workplace will be examined, and maintenance of a spirit of service will also be explored.
UNIT 3 DISTRIBUTIVE FORMATIVE ASSESSMENT (DFA)
DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
Learning Objectives
In this DFA, you will reflect on a professional experience that left you stressed or overwhelmed, and then explore mindfulness techniques that may have served you well then or in similar situations in the future.
Take a few minutes to reflect on a particularly stressful situation in your professional practice environment involving a patient, peer, or practice issue. Describe the situation in as much detail as possible, with a focus on how you were perceiving and experiencing the situation: your thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions. Then choose specific mindfulness techniques that you could use to buffer the stress of the situation. WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
What techniques would you choose? How would you implement them in the workplace? What would be the outcomes you might achieve after using them? How might the techniques that you choose help to change your thoughts, feelings, and physical reactions in ways that could reduce stress and lessen reactivity?
Feinblum, D. (2019, July 24). The joy of meaningful recognition: A DAISY coordinator’s perspective. American Nurse. https://www.americannursetoday.com/blog/the-joy-of-meaningful-recognition-a-daisy-coordinators-perspective/
Institute for Healthcare Improvement. (2017, September 27). Incorporating mindfulness into clinical practice [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/v9NkUomOO_w
Sherman, R. (2019, October 3). Building your resiliency. American Nurse. https://www.americannursetoday.com/building-your-resiliency/
Spencer, J. (2018, August 10). What is metacognition? (Exploring the metacognition cycle) [Video]. YouTube. https://youtu.be/HZrUWvfU6VU
You must proofread your paper. But do not strictly rely on your computer’s spell-checker and grammar-checker; failure to do so indicates a lack of effort on your part and you can expect your grade to suffer accordingly. Papers with numerous misspelled words and grammatical mistakes will be penalized. Read over your paper – in silence and then aloud – before handing it in and make corrections as necessary. Often it is advantageous to have a friend proofread your paper for obvious errors. Handwritten corrections are preferable to uncorrected mistakes.
Use a standard 10 to 12 point (10 to 12 characters per inch) typeface. Smaller or compressed type and papers with small margins or single-spacing are hard to read. It is better to let your essay run over the recommended number of pages than to try to compress it into fewer pages.
Likewise, large type, large margins, large indentations, triple-spacing, increased leading (space between lines), increased kerning (space between letters), and any other such attempts at “padding” to increase the length of a paper are unacceptable, wasteful of trees, and will not fool your professor.
The paper must be neatly formatted, double-spaced with a one-inch margin on the top, bottom, and sides of each page. When submitting hard copy, be sure to use white paper and print out using dark ink. If it is hard to read your essay, it will also be hard to follow your argument.
ADDITIONAL INSTRUCTIONS FOR THE CLASS
Discussion Questions (DQ)
Initial responses to the DQ should address all components of the questions asked, include a minimum of one scholarly source, and be at least 250 words.
Successful responses are substantive (i.e., add something new to the discussion, engage others in the discussion, well-developed idea) and include at least one scholarly source.
One or two sentence responses, simple statements of agreement or “good post,” and responses that are off-topic will not count as substantive. Substantive responses should be at least 150 words.
I encourage you to incorporate the readings from the week (as applicable) into your responses.
Weekly Participation
Your initial responses to the mandatory DQ do not count toward participation and are graded separately.
In addition to the DQ responses, you must post at least one reply to peers (or me) on three separate days, for a total of three replies.
Participation posts do not require a scholarly source/citation (unless you cite someone else’s work).
Part of your weekly participation includes viewing the weekly announcement and attesting to watching it in the comments. These announcements are made to ensure you understand everything that is due during the week.
APA Format and Writing Quality
Familiarize yourself with APA format and practice using it correctly. It is used for most writing assignments for your degree. Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for APA paper templates, citation examples, tips, etc. Points will be deducted for poor use of APA format or absence of APA format (if required).
Cite all sources of information! When in doubt, cite the source. Paraphrasing also requires a citation.
I highly recommend using the APA Publication Manual, 6th edition.
Use of Direct Quotes
I discourage overutilization of direct quotes in DQs and assignments at the Masters’ level and deduct points accordingly.
As Masters’ level students, it is important that you be able to critically analyze and interpret information from journal articles and other resources. Simply restating someone else’s words does not demonstrate an understanding of the content or critical analysis of the content.
It is best to paraphrase content and cite your source. WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation
LopesWrite Policy
For assignments that need to be submitted to LopesWrite, please be sure you have received your report and Similarity Index (SI) percentage BEFORE you do a “final submit” to me.
Once you have received your report, please review it. This report will show you grammatical, punctuation, and spelling errors that can easily be fixed. Take the extra few minutes to review instead of getting counted off for these mistakes.
Review your similarities. Did you forget to cite something? Did you not paraphrase well enough? Is your paper made up of someone else’s thoughts more than your own?
Visit the Writing Center in the Student Success Center, under the Resources tab in LoudCloud for tips on improving your paper and SI score.
Late Policy
The university’s policy on late assignments is 10% penalty PER DAY LATE. This also applies to late DQ replies.
Please communicate with me if you anticipate having to submit an assignment late. I am happy to be flexible, with advance notice. We may be able to work out an extension based on extenuating circumstances.
If you do not communicate with me before submitting an assignment late, the GCU late policy will be in effect.
I do not accept assignments that are two or more weeks late unless we have worked out an extension.
As per policy, no assignments are accepted after the last day of class. Any assignment submitted after midnight on the last day of class will not be accepted for grading.
Communication
Communication is so very important. There are multiple ways to communicate with me:
Questions to Instructor Forum: This is a great place to ask course content or assignment questions. If you have a question, there is a good chance one of your peers does as well. This is a public forum for the class.
Individual Forum: This is a private forum to ask me questions or send me messages. This will be checked at least once every 24 hours. WGU DFA: Reflecting on a Stressful Situation