This week at the San Marcos Treatment Center, I was paired up with my peer Breana and we were assigned to the adolescent girl side of the treatment center. I had told myself that morning while driving to the facility that I did not want to be placed with adolescent girls. This thought came to me because of the fact that I had heard Ms. Trinidad say in class that some of the girls there have been sexually abused and/or have abused others themselves. Being a guy, going to the adolescent side makes me hesitant because I don’t want them to feel uncomfortable with me around. I realized that not even guy nurses/workers are really allowed to be with this age group either. Initially walking in to the classroom in which the adolescent girls were in made me feel uncomfortable because they just kept staring towards my direction. This made me think that they would not want to talk to me just because of the way that they were looking at Breana and I. Luckily, being paired with Breana helped make things less tense and allowed for the girls to open up to us and for me to practice my goal of improving my therapeutic communication.

        Today my knowledge about growth & development helped me while being with the adolescent girls. In my development psychology class I learned that the sudden and rapid physical changes that adolescents go through make adolescents very self-conscious. They are sensitive and worried about their own body changes and they may make painful comparisons about themselves or towards their peers. One of the girls Breana and I spoke to would verbally make mean/blunt comments about her other peers in the facility. Although she may not have been meaning to come off rudely, I could see how her comments may hurt someone who may have low self-esteem. In my previous clinical experience, I could not get some of the male children to talk to me. I believe that it is because I have learned in various classes that developmentally, girls tend to be more outgoing and talkative than boys. Even though I did not struggle to make conversation with this age group, I still incorporated the use of silence and active listening in my part in order to attentively listen and get a better grasp at how this age group communicates and interacts with one another.

         Although I did not struggle to make conversation with this age group while I was with Breana, I noticed that when Breana and I tried to split up to talk to patient’s one-on-one that the girl I was speaking to was more shy and reluctant to open up to me. I thought to myself that instead of splitting up that I should perhaps have Breana with me at all times in order to promote a more trusting and calming environment. We also decided to stick to talking in small groups with the patients because of the fact that we’ve learned in class that during adolescence, friends become more important as they pull away from their parents and other adults while in search for their own identity. Their peer groups, in some cases, become a sort of safe haven or clique that they feel safe talking around. Thus, although trying to talk to the adolescent girl on my own was tense, in the sense that she seemed less comfortable around me, I think that I handled the situation appropriately by having both her and I go sit with Breana and the girl she was talking to. This helped provide a more relaxing environment that would help facilitate communication. Talking to this age group really helped me visually see how what we may see in movies and learn about in class about how girls tend to form cliques in which they confide in, is actually quite normal.

       Moreover, this experience definitely changed my assumptions of not believing that most girls form cliques and are judgmental towards each other, because I got to see this first hand. Having this prior growth and development knowledge that I’ve gained through my developmental psychology class and other nursing courses helped me better understand this age group and facilitate communication. This event has taught me that as a male, I need to make sure to take into consideration that female patient’s may not always feel comfortable around me. I always hear in class about how different cultures may only want the same gender taking care of them, and didn’t think that this was true for most cultures in the United States.

       I will make sure next time to keep what I have learned in mind while taking care of or speaking to female patients. This event has taught me that having a different gender than my patient could impact care in the sense of it impairing the patient’s willingness to communicate with me. When a circumstance like this occurs again in the future, I will make sure to ask the patient whether it would be ok if I speak to them alone or if they would prefer to speak to me with another female present. This experience will alter my future behavior towards treating female patients, because I will now be more sensitive about how the difference in gender could make a patient feel uncomfortable. Perhaps simply reminding the female patient about my role as a professional nursing student/future nurse, will allow for them to trust me and open up to me more despite the difference in gender.