Approaches To Reflective Practice

Ans. Reflective practice is a way of learning from own experience to improve the way we work.

Reflective practices helps you to reflect on a regular basis and be able to discuss your plans and ideas with other colleagues, This will help you identify areas of strength and help to discover those who may need further help with their development .

In other words, it’s not just the thinking that’s important. You also have to develop an understanding of the theory and others’ practice too, and explore ideas with others. Reflective practice can be a shared activity: it doesn’t have to be done alone

Reflective practice is the process that enables individuals to achieve better understanding of themselves, their understanding, their skills, competencies and their workplace practices in general.

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.

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

Within different disciplines, what is understood by reflective practice varies considerably (Fook et al, 2006). Despite this, some agreement has been achieved. In general, reflective practice is understood as the process of learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and/or practice (Boud et al 1985;

A load of research has been done on learning and reflective practice and its effectiveness on the practitioners and one of the first people to research reflective Practice was Donald Schon in his book “The Reflective Practitioner” in 1983. Schon was an influential writer on reflection and had two main ways of identifying reflection and they were reflection in action and reflection on action.

While working as a transporter and clinic aide at two different hospitals, I was able to interact with many patients. I always enjoyed listening to the patients and helping them when I was able. Throughout my life, I have always been fascinated with the processes that governed the human body. I feel that increasing my knowledge in the field of medicine, will equip me with more skills to impact and improve the lives of more patients.

The idea of reflective practice in an academic context however is new to me, and I did feel lost at first. Now I can see how reflecting on my own learning and experiences has helped me to see where I have improved week on week and I think that as a result, my confidence has improved and I am able to contribute more in class, I have more confidence in my ability to teach and I feel that as a result I am learning more. The process or reflection, evaluation and adaptation is truly a cyclic one.

Through these practice & processes, we have also created opportunities for critical thinking, new idea generation and firming understanding across learnig areas. “To err is human” but to reflect is divine – a line coined by Susan Guralnick, MD, Robyn Blair, MD, & Gary Fernando, MD, in a reflection presentation. In the same document, I resonate deeply with this message: Reflective practice “is provoked by an event in one’s life that arouses a state of doubt, perplexity or uncertainty, and leads the individual to search for possible explanations or solutions” #3. I believe being a teaching professional, we are also human. In the call of duty we may have to make a judgement call and we may take a wrong decision on occasions.

Reflective practice is the process of thinking about and critically analysing your actions with the goal of changing and improving occupational practice.

Reflective practice engages practitioners in a continuous cycle of self-observation and self-evaluation in order to understand their own actions and the reactions they prompt in themselves and in learners (Brookfield, 1995; Thiel, 1999). Reflective practice is considered as an evolving concept which views learning as “an active process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse, evaluate and so inform learning about practice.” (Reid, B 1993 cited in Garfat, T. 2005).

Good reflective practitioners learn to use all of these techniques, applying one or more of them to each situation or issue they reflect on. They keep a record of their processes and outcomes, often in a reflective journal.

This self-reflection will incorporate the 4R’s model of reflective thinking in order for my reflections to be properly structured. The overall group project was a good experience for me, and provided me a great opportunity to work with people from different cultures. Although these people were from different cultures, I knew each group member before this assignment and had worked with the majority of them previously. Therefore, I respected all the group member’s and the skills, strengths and weaknesses they brought to our group. Because of my established relationship with all members, I felt that I was able to be honest in my assessment of their work without being perceived as bossy or creating conflict. The aim for all of us was to do very well in this assignment, so our group established a clear idea of outcomes and quality of work.