Reflection On Reflection In Nursing

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

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.

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.

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”.

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

Developing my holistic nursing practice or looking at who I have become as a nurse today has been a journey that has helped defined who I am today. When I look back at when I originally became a nurse over 16 years ago, I am proud of who I have become. When I finished nursing school and began my job as a new nurse I thought I had all the tools to be the best nurse I could be. I understood the nursing process, I recognized the skills needed at the bedside to be a nurse, and I felt I had great nursing documentation skills. Soon I learned that wasn’t all of what I needed.

Reflection can be defined as “a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse and evaluate and so inform learning from practice.”(Reid, 1993) It is an important factor when working within any health profession and midwifery is certainly no exception. Schon (1991) defines a reflective practitioner as “someone who learns by reflecting on current experience and applies that learning to future practice.” Reflection allows midwives to grow and develop professionally as well as personally (Kirkham, 1994) and can guide her into moulding her sphere practice in a positive way to benefit the women she is caring for (Church & Raynor, 2000). It also allows midwives to continue with lifelong learning and put theory to

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

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.

According to the Royal College of Nursing (RCN) (2013) defines reflection as “an important activity in which people recapture their experience, think about it, mull over and evaluate it”. Therefore it can be argued that a reflection is a way of thinking about situations, analysing and learning from them. Nursing Midwifery Council (NMC) (2015) advocates that nurses are to maintain confidentiality at all times. Therefore the patient will be named

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.

The purpose of this essay is to reflect on my personal role in the inter-professional team and the delivery of healthcare that I have encountered during my duty as a health care assistant in one of the hospitals here in England. In accordance with the NMC (2002) Code of professional conduct, confidentiality shall be maintained and all names have been changed to protect identity. The purpose of reflection as stated by John's (1995) is to promote desirable practice through the practitioner's understanding and learning about his/her lived experiences. I have decided to reflect upon an incident with the nurse in charge in one of my shifts and in order to structure my reflection I

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

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.

Skin integrity is an important concept that’s nurses assess on their patients. A key skill in nursing practice is to frequently assess the skin for possible breakdown or decreased skin integrity. Skin assessments should be conducted thoroughly once a shift and frequently reassessed for any signs of change. Skin discrepancies may be the first sign of an underlying issue. Early detection of any breakdown can help to implement interventions sooner. Unfortunately, unless there is a major skin discrepancy, skin issues can easily get overlooked, specifically in documentation and report. The focus of this paper is to research new skin integrity assessments to improve documentation effect and accuracy, resulting in decreased prevalence of skin breakdown in hospitalized patients. Topics discussed include reviewing current practices and new skin assessment techniques that decrease the prevalence of skin breakdown and pressure ulcers.