Nursing: Reflective, Critical, And Improvement 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)

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.

This essay will demonstrate an understanding of the theory of reflective practice within healthcare and nursing. Furthermore, the essay will identify and analyse the different models of reflective practice, the effectiveness of the models and how healthcare professionals can apply this within their profession. Also, the barriers that may prevent a healthcare professional from reflecting will be discussed in this essay and how it will impact the quality of care delivered to patients.

Reflective practice in nursing is the process where we examine our nursing ability’s and practice in order to critically think and analyze the way we work and think about the views of others in our practice, what we could have done and we could have achieved a greater result by doing this also allows us as nurses to include best practice and use our own judgment in patient care to show the factors that either aid and hinder nurse to patient relationship. (Lowenstein, Bradshaw and Fuszard, 2001) described reflecting in nursing practice “the nurse must first come to understand what he or she defines as ideal practice”.

I will use a reflective model to discuss how I have achieved the necessary level of competence in my nurse training programme. The reflective model I have chosen to use is Gibbs model (Gibbs 1988). Gibbs model of reflection incorporates the following: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion and an action plan (Gibbs 1988). The model will be applied to the essay to facilitate critical thought, relating theory to practice where the model allows. Discussion will include the knowledge underpinning practice and the evidence base for the clinical skill. A conclusion to the essay will

Experience is sometimes regarded as the best teacher. Many things can be learned in a classroom and by formal academic study, but many cannot. Reflective practice is a form approach to learning through experience. Reflective practice is a lifelong learning process to promote continual development of the nurse. Reflective writing practice helps the nurse to gain knowledge and to challenge their own ideas and concepts. The idea of reflective practice is not only to see what happened, but to see the situation through new eyes, eyes that can help in personal growth and to develop ways to respond differently in the future.

Gustaffson and Fagerberg point out that reflective practice has relevance for clinical practice as by understanding the contents of nurses’ reflections, it is also possible to understand the advantages of reflective practice and how and when such measures should be used by the nurses for further professional development.

For the purpose of this essay, I have selected Gibbs (1988) Reflective Learning Cycle to reflect on an aspect of individual professional practice, which requires development in preparation for my role as a Registered Nurse. Gibbs (1988) Model of Reflection provides a clear description of a situation, analysis of feelings, evaluation of the experience, conclusion, and action plan to make sense of the experience to examine what you would do if the situation happens again.

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.

Reflective practice in nursing is considered an important aspect to nursing. Durgahee ( 1997) defines reflective practice as a process of learning and teaching professional maturity through the critical analysis of experience, whilst John ( 2009) up to date explanation of reflection is learning through our everyday experience towards realising one vision of desirable practice as a lived reality.

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

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