Reflection is an essential element in developing professional competencies, and it is considered a way of evaluating an experience to identify alternative strategies to do things. Writing is a physical act that includes perceptions, thoughts, feelings, and relations connected to a particular situation or event. Reflective writing needs an individual to reflect, value the benefits it might bring to the practice, utilize a structure that one is comfortable doing and document the notes in bullet points, short and informal language. In nursing, reflection is crucial since it helps learn from events to enhance a nurse’s skill and knowledge set because it builds their reasoning and critical thinking.
Reflection includes high personal, mid-ground, and highly academic. High personal is reflective writing, where a nurse must spare time to reminisce on an incident from the practice and does not include any academics and research. Also, it is mainly about their emotions concerning an incident. In addition, mid-ground writing permits the nurse to reflect on individual experiences with the course relation, such as lectures and research materials(McKinnon,2016).In addition, high academic writing is when the nurses deal with the readings and lecture materials without their personal experience as a reference.
I have experienced a situation where I needed to prepare in the lab setting. I was expected to conduct a test and never consulted other healthcare providers to acquire the necessary research materials; therefore, I needed more information on the situation. As a result, I only focused on one component in the test samples. This led to inadequate and incomplete results, resulting in the results being delayed for a long and affecting the whole diagnosis process. The situation affected my learning as it affected my performance due to a lack of satisfaction with how I dealt with it. As a nursing student, I realized that in any setting, I should work with the clinical staff to get all the information.
There are potential consequences for student nurses engaging in clinical practice when unprepared. For student nurses, one of the consequences is that it will lead to a lack of motivation to create a clinical setup conducive to their learning since they need more confidence in what they are doing (Berhe & Gebretensaye,2021). It means that being unprepared will decrease the student performance, and they will have negative attitudes affecting their overall learning.
For the patients and their families, student nurses engaging in clinical practice when unprepared can lead to missed and delayed diagnosis, inadequate monitoring after the procedure, failure to act on test results and failure to take proper precautions. This is detrimental to the patient’s health and can lead to death, especially when there is inadequate information flow, such as being transferred to another facility or being discharged from one component to another (McKinnon,2016). Lastly, for the team on the unit, engaging in clinical practice affects the collaboration and the whole process of working together, resulting in mistakes.
The reflective practice is more than just thoughtful; it changes practice into potential learning incidences. Equipping nursing students with the necessary skills will make them more autonomous and confident, especially when navigating the process. Also, it makes the students think more about the most effective required nursing interventions to accomplish the patients’ desired outcomes. It means that encouraging the nurses to learn from practice will contribute to a greater responsibility sense, identifying any knowledge deficit and utilizing the process to deal with any issue.
Nursing education is tremendously changing, and nurses must try to align with the changes, especially their knowledge and skills. Nursing professionals no longer accept that nurses depend on initial knowledge to care for patients. The nurses can review their practice and improve their personal and professional knowledge and skills; therefore, they provide high-quality care, and there is essential awareness of the learning chances available to promote professional growth (Bulman et al.,2012). In addition, the nurses will have incredible pride in recognizing that their care can be the best available. They will be dedicated and motivated to know that the care effectively meets the patient’s needs.
The utilization of reflection to improve nursing practice instead of the theory application strategies has impacted nursing. In high, hard ground where additional research is incorporated, writing is necessary to deal with the challenges for nurses. Most nurses focus on the incidences and substandard care they are not happy with for reflection, resulting in them losing out on significant learning opportunities (Berhe & Gebretensaye,2021). Reflection on good practices ensures that nurses can use the existing knowledge, practical performance underpinning, and theory disentanglement to maintain high-quality care delivery.
Reflection supports the development of clinical judgement since it encourages supporting the learning environment. As a result, the nurses better evaluate and understand all the information, which is essential in clinical practice. Also, reflection helps the nurses develop positive attitudes in all the processes, having significant performance in clinical practice.
Reflective writing is helpful to nurses since it is crucial for developing critical thinking skills. Nurses use writing to evaluate the questions, general observations, self-awareness expressions, synthesis of statements, and speculative statements. Also, it aids the nurses in revising previously held ideas and gathering new information that can enhance critical thinking. To the nurses, such reflective writing is the subject of contemplation, especially on individual thinking and assumptions, and an intensive self-evaluation comprehension. As the nurses become more comfortable with self-reflection and journaling, they will feel more competent about their habits and critical thinking.
References
Berhe, S., & Gebretensaye, T. (2021). Nursing student’s challenges towards clinical learning environment at the School of Nursing and Midwifery in Addis Ababa University. A qualitative study. International Journal of Africa Nursing Sciences, 15, 100378.
Bulman, C., Lathlean, J., & Gobbi, M. (2012). The concept of reflection in nursing: Qualitative findings on student and teacher perspectives. Nurse Education Today, 32(5), e8-e13.
McKinnon, J. (2016). Reflection for nursing life: principles, process and practice. Routledge.
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