Reflective Practice

“Reflection is active, purposeful thought applied to an experience to understand the meaning of that experience for the individual” (Ashby, 2006 p.28). Reflective practice is vital to the nursing profession. Although there is little evidence based information of the benefits of reflective practice (Schutz, 2007), there are many benefits pertaining to reflective practice and resulting in a holistic patient approach and therefore nurses are able to provide better care. There are many models available to use to reflect on situations in a nurse’s practice and to help evaluate what was done well and what can be changed to improve the practice. The Gibb’s reflective cycle is a commonly used model. It is a user-friendly model that encourages clear description of the situation, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusions, and an action plan of what you would do differently if the situation occurred again (Ashby, 2006).
“Nurse education has enjoyed and continues to enjoy considerable faith in the notion of reflective practice” (Page & Meerabeau, 2000 p.366). Right from the initial education, reflective practice is used frequently in nursing. “Reflective practice has become part of the discourse of nursing education classrooms, conferences, and journals, and are popular features of nursing continuing education” (Ruth-Sahd, 2003 p.489). This can help a nurse define his or her own personal practice. There are many situations arising in the nursing profession that will need to be re-evaluated on how it could have improved or gone more smoothly. Studies have identified positive outcomes of reflection such as integration of theoretical concepts to practice, increased learning from experience, enhanced self-esteem, acceptance of professional responsibility, enhanced critical thinking, empowerment of practitioners, improvement in practice by promoting self-awareness, and helping students expand and develop their clinical knowledge and skills (Ruth-Sahd, 2003).

References: Ashby, C. (2006). Models for reflective practice. Practice Nurse, 32(10), 28, 31-32. Gibbs, G. (2011, March 03). Gibbs reflective cycle. Retrieved from http://distributedresearch.net/wiki/index.php/Gibbs_reflective_Cycle Page, S., & Meerabeau, L. (2000). Achieving change through reflective practice: Closing the loop . Nurse Education Today, 20(5), 365-372. Ruth-Sahd, L. (2003). Reflective practice: A critical analysis of data-based studies and implications for nursing education. Journal of Nursing Education, 42(11), 488-497. Schutz, S. (2007). Reflection and reflective practice: The journal of the health visitors ' association. Community Practitioner, 80(9), 26-29.