Bon Secours Memorial College of Nursing

NUR 4144: Professional Role Development Servant Leadership

Summative Service-Learning Reflection
Grading Rubric
Student Name: _Jessica Tharp___________________

Instructions: Reflect upon your personal experience with service-learning activities across your
nursing program, using the following key components. This is a reflection of how service-
learning has shaped your values.
Papers should be between 1000-1500 words.
Points Points
Possible Earned
1. Noticing & Interpreting: 30
What expectations did you have of service-learning from the
beginning of your nursing program? Were these
expectations met or not met (with explanation)?
What strengths and problems did you, personally, see in the
community? What assets/solutions to problems did you see?
How did your values and experiences as part of a certain
cultural, racial, ethnic, religious group, socioeconomic status
group, or exposure to media or other sources of information
concerning needy communities shape what you saw and
heard throughout your nursing program?
2. Responding: 20
What have you learned about the needs of the surrounding
community?
Have you found the service-learning activities to be truly
relevant to the community and your learning experiences?
3. Reflecting on service-learning: 30
Has your service-learning experiences influenced your
perception of your call to serve?
Has your concept of service-learning changed since you
began your career as a nursing student?
Briefly describe how your past experiences of service-
learning in your nursing courses (NUR 1100, NUR 3113,
and NUR 3114, NUR 4144) helped prepare you for service-
learning.
4. Reflecting on civic engagement: 20
What is civic engagement? (cite any ideas that are not your
own)
How do you plan to stay engaged with the local community
when you graduate?
Total Personal Summative Reflection Points: 100

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 Nur 4144 Professional Role Development
Summative Service-Learning Reflection
Jessica Tharp
My expectations of the service-learning portion of the curriculum did not correlate with
the reality of the programs assignments. I hoped and thought that we would have more
flexibility of the organizations and populations that we wanted to serve. In addition, I hoped and
thought that the assignments would be more focused on the experience and services provided to
the community, not driven based on meeting the requirements of a rubric or set assignment. I
often found my experiences to be less rewarding due to this. It seemed that I was completing
these tasks solely because it was a requirement to get a certain grade, not because I genuinely
wanted to give my time to that particular community or organization I was serving. I believe if I
was given more flexibility about the assignment I would have felt more satisfied with the
experiences. There are however exceptions to this. I have had a few opportunities, such as, the
VA Home, which I really enjoyed and would return to volunteer my time in the future. However,
as a whole, my expectations were not met.
The largest strength in the community is that there are many resources and programs to
meet the needs of vulnerable populations. However, it appears that the most vulnerable are
individuals that have barriers that stretch beyond the ability of these programs. These barriers
include issues relating to homelessness, illiteracy, poverty, mental illness, lack of transportation,
lack of social support, lack of willingness to change or learn, etc. There are multiple ways to
address these barriers to better serve the community. The simplest answer is to take initiative
and go out into the community to help these individuals one-by-one. However, this approach
may not be very realistic and does not address the issues globally, only locally. Nurses can
participate in programs to help reach out to these individuals and coordinate educational sessions
out in the community to help meet the needs of these individuals. Lastly, raising awareness to
these issues may be the best solution to start the conversation towards change.
The different community settings I have visited throughout my academic career
contributed to my compassionate and versatile care to all current and future patients. It helps to
create diversity in my thoughts and actions as I experience different individual situations,
personalities, lifestyles, etc. It taught me to self-educate on current evidence of practice, current
issues socially and within health care, and on the diversity of our region. The experiences I have
had in the community have made me more altruistic as a person and as a nurse. I am now more
cultural and spiritually diverse in the quality of care I give to my patients.
I have learned that the needs of the surrounding community vary per population. For
example, the needs of the mental health community are different from the pediatric community.
Even further, some individuals have multiple needs, for example, you may encounter a pediatric
patient with mental health needs. Overall, the communities needs are very individualized, but
can be categorized into groups to better provide the proper resources. I have found that the
community learning experiences have been beneficial to my learning and understanding of the
specific needs of our region, especially in relation to health care. I also believe that I was well-
rounded in the opportunities to different domains of vulnerable populations in the community. I
have been to organizations that provide care to individuals suffering from mental illness, end-of-
life, pediatric-focused, geriatric-focused, chronic illnesses, developmentally delayed individuals,
etc.

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 My service learning experiences have influenced my call to serve by reinforcing my want
to give back to the community. In the future, I plan to continue serving the community. At the
beginning of my academic career I applied to become a Community Ambassador to increase my
exposure and work within the community health care setting. I work with the Care-a-Van in the
Richmond area and float to multiple locations. I plan to continue my volunteer services after my
graduation. My concept of service-learning has not changed since my acceptance into nursing
school. I have always had a firm grasp on the concept and always have felt the call to serve.
Its very interesting because I cant remember most of my experiences in the way that I
can tell you exactly what location we visited each semester, however, I can remember
experiences and learning moments. Some examples of this include interacting with mental
health patients, teaching educational classes, and providing palliative care. One of the
experiences I remember the most was at one of the facilities in Richmond that provided
resources to mental health individuals to help re-integrate them into the community. They had
services at their facility that taught them basic tasks for success, such as, coping mechanisms,
diet and exercise essentials, and vocational skills. I can remember trying to teach them tai chi for
relaxation and coping. It was so difficult for them to coordinate the reception of instructions,
interpretation in their brain, and movement of their extremities. Something that we can easily
comprehend and complete was very difficult for most patients. This taught me a lot about the
learning ability of mental health patients. They may not be able to multi-task or function to the
ability that healthy-minded individuals can. It reminded me of Maslows Hierarchy and the
interpretation of the reason they may not be able to progress to higher levels on the tier due to
their disability.
According to Ehrlich, civic engagement means working to make a difference in the civic
life of our communities and developing the combination of knowledge, skills, values and
motivation to make that difference. It means promoting the quality of life in a community,
through both political and non-political processes. You must have some level of civil
engagement to be a servant leader and participate in community service commitments. Your
morals must be intact and you must have responsibility. As stated previously, I plan to continue
my volunteer work within the Care-a-Van of Richmond and continue to expand my volunteer
work to a more pediatric focus. After at least six months into my new-grad nursing job I plan to
research and decide what community-based program I would like to volunteer my services to. In
the future, after becoming a more established nurse, I would like to take the knowledge of my
practice as an acute-care medical-surgical pediatric nurse and identify common issues that
progress to hospitalizations of pediatric patients and implement prevention strategies to provide
to the community to help decrease admissions and better control acute and acute on chronic
exacerbations of illnesses.

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References
Ehrlich, T. (2000). Civic Responsibility and Higher Education. Oryx Press.

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