Reflective Essay Sample Comprising a Personal Development Report and Plan

A personal development plan describes an essential tool to explain the development of a student or any other person. The development plan assists the writer in planning on basic techniques to use them in evaluating his or her abilities. Additionally, personal development plan can help the student to assess personal weaknesses and strengths. The assessment might touch different areas of a lifetime such as learning or work experiences. A student should ensure that all the areas of personal development plan are included in the writing and well understood by the reader. This paper ought to evaluate my self-development by my listening skills and self-awareness.

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Personal development involves a set of activities that can be used for the purpose of improving self-understanding and identity. Additionally, it involves individual talents and potential developments of oneself. When writing about personal development, the events might have influenced an individual positively negatively. The activities explain the aspects of improved quality of and also contributing to the personal realization of dreams and aspirations. A discussion of personal development and a reflective plan is not only fixed to self-development but also involves informal and formal activities that are made to develop others.

An instance is for teaching, guiding, counselling, mentoring and coaching. In the work environment, managers can use their talents to develop other employees in the workplace. A mental health practitioner can use his skills to improve the health of the patients in the hospital.

Personally, after my studies at the university, I worked as a practicing nurse in a clinic as a mental healthcare assistant. While in the clinic I could interact with many clinicians, patients and support healthcare staff. My interaction with many people and the work environment helped me to discover I had the desire to attend to other people in need of my help. However, I was poor at listening and giving people time to talk to me. In myself, I felt many people I was handling were not sure of what I wanted. As a result, I perceived myself to have more knowledge and could understand their needs better.

My problem was being impatient to listen to my friends. I often never understood what they were talking about because of my pride of knowledge. The biggest challenge is that I failed to offer the solutions to most problems relayed on me. On discovering this problem, I made efforts to change and start listening to my patients and colleagues. I have discovered how it is to communicate with other people and understand their issues better. As a result, I have managed to communicate and understand other people much better after learning communication skills. If I get a higher chance in healthcare, I am sure I can deliver the best services to the clients without any challenge. Further, I can develop a peaceful rapport with the colleagues and bosses in the workplace.

Regarding my personal experience, self-awareness is a significant factor in individual human development. It is essential in the core and broad, significant pursuit for personal development. Developing personal self-awareness entails discovering new truths regarding oneself. According to Stranks (2005), self-awareness is the circle whereby everything in and outside the circle is the self. The things existing in the circle are those that individual current level of self-awareness enables one to understand. As an individual's circle of self-awareness expands, somebody becomes consciously aware a bigger portion of herself and borders her awareness to enlarge. When an individual opens many doors for improvement, he or she gets an opportunity to learn many things in life. Personal development begins during self-awareness.

My communication skills have improved, and they have been acknowledged in my nursing practice. Nevertheless, imagined of this learning need when I realized my weakness associated with assertiveness in communication with other people in the clinic. I faced many difficulties when dealing with nurses and patients. I participated in the learning activity held in the hospital on November 20, 2013, during my placement in the clinic. I identified this need in my second week of placement. I could manage to perform patient admissions and recording under the supervision of the senior mental practitioner. The need to enhance my communication skills was established from my senior's feedback. I accepted to develop to assist in helping to eliminate medical errors in the future practice.

Improving my communication and listening skills improved my professional satisfaction. I have spent much time researching and analyzing the learning need. Nevertheless, I felt it could be a continuous process of improvement. Further, I felt it was significant to work because it impacted my patients and myself as a future professional nurse. I have come to realize that self-awareness is essential in an individual's life. The view we have towards daily activities of the world hugely determine the state of the world someone is living in.

Consequently, a single important reason for people to learn from my life report is that life is the importance of things we focus on. At times someone might think about failure, and he or she finds reasons to succumb to it. Similarly, when you think about on health matters and well-being, you will make the best decision of maximizing every opportunity to achieve better health and well-being.

I remember Tommy, a 50-year-old patient who suffered right leg cellulitis. I felt challenging moment in my first meeting with him because I presented myself as an assertive, self-assured and empathetic practicing nurse. I wanted to present the impression that the situation was not comfortable. I observed from the initial days that Tommy could not cope. Nevertheless, I felt that I was unable to make a direct statement without coming across as patronizing practicing nurse. On the positive side, I decided to improve communication and listening skills in the learning period so that I could acquire the knowledge and skills required to be a competent nurse.

My encounter with patients who were expressing their anger dislikes, and disagreements to other practicing nurses, I realized that patients sense how practicing nurses present themselves. Additionally, patients could base their decisions on the practicing nurse's ability to listen and communicate assertively. The experience motivated me to think about empathetic skills and self-awareness. While listening to Tommy's emotional concerns, he revealed to me of his fear of having no one in the house take care of his pet while in the hospital because he did not have a close friend. I replied calmly and confidently using vivid language that I intended to get permission to enable health practitioners to offer long-term support to patients like him.

I had realized that the idea of personal development involves activities of improving other peoples' wellbeing. A person operates like the principal judge of benchmarks that define strategies or plans for achieving goals. Corroboration of deterministic improvement needs an assessment t carried using specific criterion. The frameworks involve levels describing the milestones and the feedback mechanisms that offer information regarding developments. Poor communication a cause of stress in a clinic. A major area of communication where many people are poor in listening is in the hospitals. It is via the significant effect of personal development that someone can grow and enhance his relationship, happiness, wealth and health. Listening and attending are vital skills of being a proficient healthcare provider.

Often, I feel obliged to talk. As a result, I listen. Considering my plan, over-talking in the healthcare industry leads to unproductivity. I decided to develop on my listening and communication skills to be able to help other people. I have realized it is significant to understand the variation between listening and attending to patients. Attending entails a true direct focus on the other party you are communicating with. The process requires someone to consciously pay attention to what the other party is talking about. On the other hand, listening involves hearing the words of the other person and understanding them. The listening process forces the parties to interact and communicate.

As a practicing nurse, I was engaged in patient interaction and other individuals in the hospital. A study by Suzuki et al. (2006, p. 93), revealed that practicing nurses lack assertive skills required in the nursing profession. Most students were assertive but decided to misuse the skill in their nursing practice. In such, they decided to maintain positive interpersonal relation and avoid conflict. Nevertheless, a quantitative study by Suzuki et al. (2006, p. 93) revealed that it was important to measure the level of assertiveness in most of the practicing nurses. Conflict developed from the professional duties of the student nurses, and the basic nursing functions of caring can result in tension.

Initially, I could not choose the perspective I took. I realized that most of the ideas which I considered stealthy had been rolling with life, got influenced by the events surrounding my friends and me. This encouraged me to feel like giving up my powers as a human being to introduce my strengths. It appeared challenging to grow myself with the absence of self-awareness. On making sufficient efforts towards improving self-awareness, I focused on improving listening skills. Since then, I have managed to maintain a high level of self-awareness. I could keep my attention focused on things going on within the hospital. It is vivid to notice that human beings are complex and also diverse. To develop myself, in the self-awareness in habits, values, personality and needs. Through an individual study of myself, it was evident that to me that personal needs and values could not be changed on everything I have been managed to learn regarding myself.

It is significant to each to acknowledge and look forward to personal values. My present priority has been developed my relationship with my God. It has been hard personally for me to keep sight of this priority on a daily basis. Typically, I faced many challenges and the developing opportunities that could involve the things to be done. Before the encounter, I used to spend a lot of time on events of low priority because of only a few things on my values. As a result, I have been likely to realize the things I considered important.

I discovered that some of my strengths and abilities included working under strict deadlines and supervision. I could write proper medical records and ensure timely delivery. The supervision helped me to manage the workload including attending some of my patience and understanding their problems. Nevertheless, I realized that I had some weaknesses that made my performance to dwindle in some areas. For instance, I discovered that I had a challenge in interacting with other practicing nurses, but I was improving slowly. I used to fail to attend office briefings at work.

Further, I realized that I could not consult from fellow nurses hence not understanding the power of teamwork. Also, in my placement period, I did not consult my supervisor rather I forced myself on personalized research to solve problems. My strategy could often result in errors. With this reflection, I discovered several opportunities I could have utilized to perfect my communication and listening skills. These opportunities ought to be included in my reflection plan to encourage other people. I suffered many problems due to my weaknesses. Firstly, I ran a risk of staying alone because of m...