Discomfort first, then description, analysis, evaluation and learning: Atkins and Murphy's stages carry a composite student's first locked-unit day in this NU245CL Unit 2 journal entry. Searches like "nu 245cl unit 2 assignment example", "nu245cl unit 2 sample" and "nu245cl unit 2 example" land here.
What a finished NU245CL Unit 2 reflective journal entry looks like
About 850 words of first-person prose under five headings taken from the model. The opening stage names the discomfort before any event is described: a tight chest when the second door clicked shut, and a hand reaching for keys the writer did not carry. Description follows in plain past tense. A composite man near the dayroom asked whether the writer was new staff or newly admitted; the writer laughed too loudly, said student, and retreated to the station to read charts for forty minutes. Analysis connects that retreat to research on students' anxiety before mental health placements. Evaluation asks which of the writer's assumptions held and which did not. The learning stage ends on a changed opening routine for the next clinical day, and nothing in the entry points to a real unit or person.
How a NU245CL Unit 2 example is structured
Atkins and Murphy's model suits this entry because it begins where the entry does, with awareness of uncomfortable feelings, rather than with the event. That order lets the writer name the unease before explaining it away. The description stage stays factual and brief, with the man's question paraphrased and his age given only as a band. Analysis carries the argument: the chart reading felt like preparation and functioned as avoidance, a pattern the writer recognizes from earlier work watching patients rather than talking with them. One source on pre-placement anxiety and one on contact reducing stigma support it. Evaluation weighs what the locked door means to staff, safety, against what it means to the people who cannot open it. Learning is stated as a behavior an instructor could confirm: ten minutes in the dayroom before opening any record.
Unease named before events
The entry's first paragraph records the tight chest and the reach for missing keys, then stops. Placing feeling ahead of description is the model's design, and it keeps the unease from being tidied into a lesson too early.
A question with no easy answer
Asked whether they were new staff or newly admitted, the writer laughed and said student. The entry examines the laugh rather than the question, since it came from discomfort at being mistaken for a patient.
Chart reading as a hiding place
Forty minutes with records looked productive. Analysis reframes the time as avoidance with a respectable surface, the same distance the writer once kept as a sitter, now dressed as preparation.
One door, two meanings
Staff experience the lock as protection; patients experience it as the edge of their world for now. The evaluation stage holds both readings and admits the writer felt only the first until the key went missing.
Ten minutes before any record
The learning stage commits to sitting in the dayroom at the start of the next shift before reading a single chart, a change the clinical instructor could see from across the unit.
Where marks go in NU245CL Unit 2
Entries that tour the unit, its layout, schedule and staffing, without one reaction from the writer score lowest on a first psychiatric day. Feelings named and immediately excused, everyone is nervous at first, stop the analysis before it starts. Where the model is required, collapsing its five stages into three, or skipping evaluation, loses structure credit. Analysis without a source leaves claims about student anxiety as opinion. Describing patients as scary or unpredictable draws professionalism comments, even when the writer means their own fear. A learning statement such as being more comfortable cannot be observed on the next clinical day. Identifiers are a steady loss too: an age, a diagnosis and a distinctive remark in one paragraph can point to a single person.
Get a NU245CL Unit 2 example written to your instructions
Journals on a psychiatric rotation run on whatever reflective model the section assigns, and the stages differ. Share which one yours names, the grading criteria for entries, and what kind of moment unsettled you, leaving out anything that identifies a person or unit. A composite first day with a comparable unease gets written through those stages. The first custom sample costs nothing; 24-48h.
NU245CL Unit 2 questions, answered
What is the Atkins and Murphy model of reflection?
A five-stage model published by Atkins and Murphy in 1994. It begins with awareness of uncomfortable feelings or thoughts, then moves to describing the situation, analyzing feelings and relevant knowledge, evaluating that knowledge, and identifying learning. Its first stage makes it a natural fit for entries about unease, since the discomfort is the starting point rather than something the writer has to justify including.
Can a journal admit to being afraid of patients?
It can admit to fear, worded as the writer's experience rather than a property of the patients. Saying the unit's sounds and locked doors unsettled you is honest reflection; calling the people there frightening is a judgment about them. Name the feeling, examine where it came from, and show what you did with it. Most instructors read that as self-awareness rather than weakness.
How much of the first day should the entry describe?
Only the moment the reflection examines, plus enough context to make it readable. A first day holds orientation, a tour, safety briefings and introductions, and recording all of it leaves little room for analysis. The sample compresses everything before the patient's question into two sentences and everything after the chart reading into one, which keeps the word count on the part that shows thinking.