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Tanner's reflection model can be used to examine nursing practice and to help nurses understand where they have gone wrong with their person-centred interactions. The model is applied to a new graduate nurse's interactions with a dementia patient in an aged-care facility. Noticing, interpreting and responding are reflection tools that can allow health practitioners to recall the situation, acknowledge what went wrong and evaluate the best approach to use in the future. The nurse had to decide which approach to use with the distressed patient, selecting a person-centred approach rather than the task-focused one that she was more familiar with. The case demonstrates the importance of person-centred care, which allows nurses to offer personal and sensitive care to patients.
KEYWORDS: reflection; dementia; person-centred care
Nurses use reflection as a tool to investigate the causes and consequences of their actions in order to improve their practice and prevent 'compassion fatigue' (Bloniasz, 201 l,p. 12).
Using Tanner's clinical judgment model (Tanner, 2006), I was able to reflect on a situation that arose on the ward I work on, and explore how this experience has influenced my developing nursing practice. In sharing this experience, I hope to encourage student nurses and registered nurses to look for opportunities in their working lives to reflect on and develop their skills.
USING A FRAMEWORK FOR REFLECTION
Tanner's clinical judgment model (Nielsen, Stragnell, & Jester, 2007) is often used to guide the health professional's reflective process. This model appealed to me in this situation as it allowed me to explore in-depth what happened and why I left the interaction feeling uncomfortable with the nursing care I had provided. It also gave me the opportunity to consider alternative actions I might have taken.
In comparison to another popular reflective cycle by Gibbs (1988), Tanner's model delved more deeply into what happened for me in the moment and guided me more thoroughly through it. The Gibbs cycle provides two broad areas of explanation: what happened and how it made the nurse feel (Taylor, 2004). Tanner, on the other hand, guides the reflector through four areas of the situation: background, noticing, interpreting and responding. Nielsen et al. (2007) explain that Tanner's model is a 'sensible way' of uncovering the ongoing factors and processes that...