Kolb's Model Of Reflection In Nursing

Throughout personal professional development reflection is essential, allowing health care professionals to self-develop by revisiting events and analysing areas in which improvements and learning would ensure a positive impact on their future practice. The Nursing and Midwifery Council, (NMC, 2010) notes that all health care practitioners must be self-aware in their own values and principles which could affect their practice. Ensuring they maintain personal and professional development while learning through supervision, feedback and reflection.

Reflecting on the situation that had taken place during my second placement working in the community. This will give me the perfect opportunity to develop and utilise my commutation skills in order to maintain the relationships with my patient. In this reflection, I am going to use Gibbs (1988) Reflective Cycle. This model is a recognised framework for my reflection. Gibbs (1988). Baird and Winter (2005,) give some reasons why reflection is require in the reflective practice. They state that a reflect is to generate the practice knowledge, assist an ability to adapt new situations, develop self-esteem and satisfaction as well as to value, develop and professionalizing practice. However, Siviter (2004)

The transition from a newly graduate nurse to a confident, capable nurse is a difficult evolution for any individual. The use of reflection enables the individual to develop their skills and knowledge in a structured way, encourages change when possible and allows for acceptance of difficult thoughts and feelings. There are several types of reflective models and it is important for the individual to find what best suits them. Reflection can be useful to learn from experience, develop critical thinking, teach emotional maturity, and empower graduate nurses while teaching them a lifelong skill.

Critical reflection is vital to develop evidence based practice for safe and quality approaches to professional nursing practice. Nursing professionals should critically reflect on events to identify what health professionals might do to improve their practice and reduce the risk of a similar error. Reflective practice can help to learn from their mistakes, be empowered and most importantly to deliver best possible care to patient as nurses must work closely with their patients to develop a therapeutic relationship. Critical reflection is a valuable skill to ensure patient centred care. This practice promotes personal development by enhancing students’ self-awareness, their sense of community, and their sense of their own capacities for

Burns, S. Bulman, C. Palmer, A. (1997) Reflective Practice in Nursing - The growth of the professional practitioner. London: Blackwell Science.

Reflection is a process of exploring and examining ourselves, our perspectives, attributes, experiences and actions / interactions. It helps us gain insight and see how to move forward (Nursing Times 2018). I believe reflection is particularly important when it comes to Nursing, as medicine is constantly changing/ improving and us ourselves medical professionals must adapt with the changes in medicine. I find that reflection is extremely useful in doing this as we can look over procedures or experiences that we have had, how that made us feel, whether we would change anything, then in the future we can see the changes that may have been made, whether this has changed our feelings and opinions on medical practice.

According to page 150, during reflection, the nurse is able to identify what was helpful, required changing, or elimination during the care provided to the patient. The effectiveness of interventions, assessment accuracy, and timeliness of actions can be considered during reflection as well. However, discussion about resources that were used or needed are not a part of the reflective areas that the nurse should focus on.

Assessment Item 1: professional practice scenario – Reflection Step 1: Kat’s Story Step 2: The Registered Nurse Standard of practice 1.2 states that a Registered Nurse “develops practise through reflection on experiences, knowledge, actions, feelings and beliefs to identify how these shape practise.” (Nursing and Midwifery Board of Australia, 2016). The profession of Nursing teaches critical thinking through the reflection of past experiences, therefore, this standard links specifically with a reflective piece, as reflection allows an individual to critically think, analyse and evaluate past experiences to positively influence their future practise and identify what occurrences can be done more efficiently or effectively in a future situation.

The ability to become reflective in practice has become a necessary skill for health professionals. This is to ensure that health professionals are continuing with their daily learning and improving their practice. Reflective practice plays a big part in healthcare today and is becoming increasingly noticed.

In recent years, reflection and reflective practice have become well-known term with in the health care arena. They are words that have been debated and discussed with in the health care setting (Tony and Sue 2006). Reflective practice is essential for nurses, as nurses are responsible for providing care to the best of their ability to patients and their families (NMC, 2008). Reid (1993) states reflection is a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice. Johns (1995) notes that reflection enables practitioners to assess, understand and learn through their experience. Reflective practice, therefore, offers nurses an opportunity to review their decisions and

(Schon, 1983) These ideas are similar in thought as they both form evaluation, analysis resulting in change. The process of reflection in health care is typically based on models of reflection which are made up of stages of analysing the situation you are in. As said in the NMC Code (2011, pg 20) ‘All nurses must be self-aware and recognise how their own values, principles and assumptions may affect their practice,’ allowing us to develop and learn from experiences.

Personal reflection in nursing is essential and critical as it allows for continuous development and re-assessment of skills whilst working within a health care setting (Reflective practice: a tool to enhance professional practice 2011, pp.1-3). Personal reflection is important as reflective practice allows for the ability for one to reflect and examine their actions and experiences which overall will increase and enhance their clinical knowledge, as well as developing and improving their practice (Reflective practice: a tool to

Reflection can be defined as an active process that evaluates experiences, draws on previous learning and provides an action plan for future experiences (Kemmis, 1985). Kolb (1984) stated that reflection is required for effective learning to occur. Therefore, as a practitioner, reflection is a significant aspect of the role. This is because, a reflective individual is able to critically analyse their actions, allowing them to become self-aware. In turn, reflection gives them an insight of how they could have behaved differently to achieve a better outcome (Boud et al. 1985). The NMC (2015) advocates life-long learning by taking account of current evidence and knowledge. For this reason, without the constant application of reflection, health care professionals may find themselves practising, using outdated customs. In midwifery, it is our obligation to ensure that our knowledge is up to date. Additionally, it is vital that we are constantly challenging and improving our practice. This will ensure that women and families under our care always remain safe as well as improving the practice of midwifery.

Reflection is not without criticism. Despite the benefits of reflective models like that of the Gibbs cycle, (9) suggests that some models can become so structured that they start to restrict the nurse in their thinking. Reflections also trigger problematic events and emotions within nurses and a further claim is that it might exhibit a lack of skill in the performance leaving the nurse discouraged and insecure (8). Despite this highlighting reflection in a negative way, there are arguably benefits to this. It allows nurses to express the attitudes they feel towards their practice, relying on the positive feelings while attending to the negative (11). (14) Supports this by implying that reflection lets nurses identify and consider their strengths

There are many models of reflection. Various theorists such as Dewey (1933), Kolb’s (1984) later adapted by Gibbs (1998), Carper (1978) later adapted by Johns (1994) have developed reflective models that nurses use as framework when reflecting. All models are structured and presented in different ways, however all cover the same principles in regards to the reflective process; description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and action plan. Without a model we would be focusing on just one aspect of an incident as we reflect, or if it was a difficult incident, we may dismiss that some parts of it had gone well. Without a model, the scope of our reflection is very likely to be limited, as is the potential for experiencing the benefits