This essay provides discussion on the importance of reflection in professional and personal development. It glances at the definition of Reflection and how reflective practices could be used by professional bodies to ensures Continuous Professional Development (CPD). Moreover, it explores the roles of reflection in the provision of quality care and likewise focuses on a model of reflection and its application to practice. Individually, we reflect on things we have done in other to improve our ideas. Personal development is a way we as individuals reflect, assess and review our strength and weakness in other to set life purposes which attain and maximise our potentials. In everyday speech, Reflection can often be overlapped with reviewing in relation to common sense but according to the RCN (2017), “reflection is a conscious effort to think about an activity or incident that allows us to consider what was positive or challenging and if appropriate plan might be enhanced, improved or done differently on future”. Kottkamp (1990) described reflection as “a cycle of paying deliberate attention to owns actions in relation to intentions…for expanding one’s views and making choices about improved ways of acting in the future, or during the action itself” (p. 182). Schon (1983) in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” suggested that there are two types of reflection we are involved in regarding an experience. He described these 2 sections of reflection as ‘reflection in action’ and ‘reflection on action’. Reflection in action is a process required by professionals to assess and observe their own experience in practice as they occur while reflection on action has been described as a process used to review, examine, explore and evaluate their previous practices with an insight aim to improve their future practices. In relation to professional development, reflection is important to nursing in the sense that it helps detect areas for development which helps improve their skills and to learn from their past experiences whereby it provides the best suitable solution for the future experiences. (RCN 2017, Kottkamp 1990, Finlay 2008, life Coach Directory 2017, Schon 1983). Reflective practice could be described as a
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
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.
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”.
Reflection is described as a way of reviewing experiences from practice so that it can be described and analysed and used to change future practice (Bulman and Schutz, 2004).
Effective reflection helps the practitioner to see the situation from an outsider's perspective, so that they can develop a better way to respond to a similar scenario in the future. Reflection is meant to achieve a change in practice, rather than simply repeating the same mistakes (Schon, 1983). Many different models exist for structuring the reflective process. Regardless of the framework used, the reflection models are meant to accomplish three things. They are supposed to promote reflecting on events, self-evaluation and analysis, and a plan to change actions in the future. This Reflective essay will utilize Driscoll's 'The What?' model as its structure (Driscoll, 1994). This model has three components"
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.
making Practice-Based Learning work Reflection on PRACTICE A resource commissioned by the Making Practice Based Learning Work project, an educational development project funded through FDTL Phase 4 Project Number 174/02 and produced by staff from the University of Ulster. www.practicebasedlearning.org Author Patricia McClure School of Health Sciences, University of Ulster www.practicebasedlearning.org contents Reflection on Practice 02
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
Schon (1987) identified two types of reflection that could be applied in the nursing practice. He described “refection-on-action” that involves assessing and analyzing an action while performing the action and “reflection-in-action” which involves going back to previous actions and situations and analyzing them to gain new insights and to improve the nursing practice (Schon 1987). Schon further argued that for reflection to take place there should be a commitment to action as there is to results. Coined in 1970, Borton’s theory on the other hand, proposes the use of three stem questions in the reflective practice (Borton, 1970). These questions were originally proposed by John Driscoll who described the experiential learning cycle (Driscoll, 1994) where practitioners are able to learn from their experiences to improve their practice. According to Driscoll (1970) these trigger questions could be used to complete the experiential learning cycle leading to a practitioner gaining new information and insights on how to improve their practice (Driscoll, 1994). The importance of Driscoll’s three stem questions in improving practice reflection among nurses cannot be underestimated. By answering these stem questions, nurses develop a better insight into the situation regarding how and why it occurred and identifies the next courses of action in case the situation recurs.
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
The Royal College of Nursing defines reflection as the process of thinking deeply with the purpose of understanding (RCN 2013). Reflection is a way people recollect, think and evaluate their knowledge which is a vital part of learning. (Boud et al cited in Royal College of Nursing). Reflection allows us to be conscious of any form of discrimination. It enables learning from mistakes and prevents future occurrence (RCN 2013). In addition, Jasper et al (2013) looks at reflection as a way professionals learn through various experiences in their role. They also went further to say, for development to happen in our roles as professionals, there is the need for continuous process of building our knowledge.
In 1938, Donald Schon’s The Reflective Practitioner: How Professionals Think in Action was published. He promoted two types of reflection, which he referred to as 1) reflection-on-action and 2) reflection-in-action (Somerville and Keeling, 2004). Reflection-on-action is the most common used reflection among practitioners. It involves constantly re-accounting what happened in the past. Reflection-in-action is a form of reflection mainly used by professional