Reflection in Nursing Practice
(Reflective
Practice in Nursing 4th edition, Bulman & Schutz, 2008)
What is
reflection?
“…reflection as reviewing experience from
practice so that it may be described, analysed, evaluated and
consequently used to inform and change future practice.”
Why are nurses
interested in reflection?
Nursing like other professional groups, has
recently moved to higher education which has meant working in an
educational system which has traditionally divided theoretical &
practical knowledge.
Nurses develop a ‘feel’ for what they do
“practically and bodily so that it becomes part of the knowing
process” but cannot always be verbally expressed ‘we know more than
we can say’. Nurses need adequate ways to express themselves and
reflection is has the potential to prove such means.
Why reflection?
Nursing is a practice discipline; effective
preparation of nurses means that we can effectively and competently
care for our patients and continue to develop skills over a
professional life time.
Nurses reflect because it provides a tool or
mechanism “through which they can communicate and justify the
importance of practice and practice knowledge.”
What does reflection have to offer?
Reflecting on practice provides us with an
opportunity to learn from it.
There are two very simple models to use to reflect in
practice. Please
click on the below links to view the two models/cycles of
reflection. You can print these out to be used as tool when writing
evidence for your portfolio.
A Model of
Structured Reflection (Driscoll 2007)
or
The Reflective
Cycle (adapted from Gibbs et al. 1998)
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