Reflective practice is an integral part of developing professionalism of a radiation therapy student. In the following journal, we see the benefit of reflective practice and what it achieves and the value of professional practice and what it requires. We see an example of said professionalism as we reflect on Carla’s experience with breast cancer and her interaction with professionals throughout her treatment. From this reflection, we see the importance of communicating in a professional manner in order to provide the best standard of care for the patient, on a physical and emotional level. According to Sandars (2009, 685), reflection is a process of turning back thoughts in order to interpret and analyse events, creating a greater understanding of oneself and influencing future actions and responses. In health, reflection is essential as it improves the actions of a health professional, leading to improvement in the standard of care and therefore impacting on the wellbeing of the patient. A reflection can be personal in the form of a journal, feedback from other staff and patients or a structured analysis of incidents. Reflective practice is the responsibility of the professional and is an ongoing process throughout their whole career (Sandars 2009, 688). As highlighted by White (2003, 8), reflective practice is of paramount importance to a radiation therapy student as it provides an avenue to review methods and develop a greater understanding of best practice early in their career. It helps keep up to date with current technique and technology and challenge and refine clinical practice (Chapman, Dempsey and Warren-Forward 2009, Introduction). Reflecting on practice helps to analyse incidents and build on techn... ... middle of paper ... ...short in my actions. I plan to consider the consequences of my actions before I implement them. If I can improve these skills, my patients will benefit as I aim to improve the standard of care I ultimately give as a radiation therapist. Reflective practice challenges the actions and experiences of students and professionals. It requires self-assessment and analysis of actions and calls for a change in order to improve care. This high standard of care is fought for by health professionals who keep their patients as a priority. Carla’s experiences highlights the impact professionals may have on patients and shows how the actions of those professionals had a significant impact on her emotional wellbeing throughout her treatment. In reflecting on this, I aim to develop my communication and self-assessment skills in order to improve the care I ultimately provide.
...hat has worked and what hasn’t. If a student for example is taking blood for the first time and something goes wrong, they don’t find the right vein. Reflective practise would help that student to understand what he/she done wrong while carrying out the procedure and how they could stop that from happening again. Not is only reflective practice good for pointing out the bad factors of something but can also be there for when a procedure goes exceptionally well. If a health professional finds a certain technique works better than what’s in place already, reflective practise is a good way to shear the information you found with other colleges so they can carry out that particular producer. Gibbs 1988 is an example of reflective practice, he uses six stages when doing reflective practice which include Description, feelings, evaluation, analyse, analyse and actions plan.
Professionalism is an adherence to a set of values comprising both a formally agreed-upon code of conduct and the informal expectations of colleagues, clients and society. The key values include acting in a patient's interest, responsiveness to the health needs of society, maintaining the highest standards of excellence in the practice of medicine and in the generation and dissemination of knowledge. In addition to medical knowledge and skills, medical professionals should present psychosocial and humanistic qualities such as caring, empathy, humility and compassion, as well as social responsibility and sensitivity to people's culture and beliefs. All these qualities are expected of members of highly trained professions.
This enables the reflective practitioner to look at their practice and see what they would change in the future, how they would develop/improve their practice. Gibbs (1988) consists of six stages to complete one cycle which is able to improve my nursing practice continuously and learning from the experience for better practice in the future.
Reflection is a significant component of pre-registration education (Davis et al.2000). Hillard (2006) claims that for practitioners to learn from an experience they need to go beyond description and should reflect on their experiences in practice as this could potentially uncover any underlying influences, motivations and knowledge. Reflecting on an experience could then be identified as a process to bridging the gap between theory and practice (Bulman & Schutz, 2004).
I will be using the Gibbs, G. (1988) model of reflection to reflect upon for this essay, as this six stage cycle will guide me through the process of description to the action plan, as I find myself to be an active/reflective learner and feel that I can relate to, and learn something that is of value to my practice, and future career and lifelong learning skills through this model of reflection. Throughout this reflective account I will refer to the patient as Mr X, in order to respect confidentiality and maintain his anonymity (NMC) (2008), and local trust policies and guidelines (2009).
The ability to become reflective in practice has become a necessary skill for health professionals. This is to ensure that health professionals are continuing with their daily learning and improving their practice. Reflective practice plays a big part in healthcare today and is becoming increasingly noticed.
...h out and help persons and families. All these lead to better and higher quality, as well as more timely services to clients, and a sense of satisfaction for both the client and the professional.
Reflection has its importance in clinical practice; we always seek to be successful and that can be achieved by learning every day of our life through experiences we encounter. In that way we can reconsider and rethink our previous knowledge and add new learning to our knowledge base so as to inform our practice. Learning new skills does not stop upon qualifying; this should become second nature to thinking professionals as they continue their professional development throughout their careers (Jasper, 2006). According to Rolfe et al. (2001), reflection does not merely add to our knowledge, it also challenges the concepts and theories by which we try to make sense of that knowledge. Acquiring knowledge through reflection is modern way of learning from practice that can be traced back at least to the 1930s and the work of John Dewey, an American philosopher and educator who was the instigator of what might be called ''discovery learning'' or learning from experience. He claimed that we learn by doing and that appreciating what results from what we do leads to a process of developing knowledge, the nature and importance of which then we must seek to interpret (Rolfe et al., 2001).
Middleton, J. (2004). A Practical To Promote Reflective Practice Within Nursing .Retrieved March 31, 2004 from www.nursingtimes.net.
As it mentioned above this reflective essay is based on the main theory on Reflection, which is the Honey and Mumford’s learning styles that was developed from Kolb’s work. This is based on four stages of specific styles of learning:
Taylor B (2004). Reflective practice: A guide for nurses and midwifes. Maidenhead: Open University Press
Reflective practice is the process of taking a step away from the work environment and thinking about your practice, consciously analysing the decisions you make during your practice and drawing on theory, relate it to what you do in practice (The Chartered Society of Physiotherapy, 2016).
Reflection within early year’s settings and schools allows for the practitioner to think about the work that is being completed either whilst doing it or after it has occurred, the reflection allows for seeing how the work has gone or whether it needs to be changed for future practice. Schön is a key writer about reflection and illustrates the differences between reflection in action, reflection on action and reflection whilst completing the task. The above critical skills help all practitioners to develop understanding as they hugely impact on others lives, if this skill is not engaged in then practice could be effected (Leeson, 2004).
Reflection is not something new; it has been used for years. According to the article “Exploring reflective thinking in nursing practice” publish...
The reflective dimension is the journey of self-development through a critical analysis of one’s thoughts, behaviours and values. Reflection allows you to relate your inner self to the environment around you. It encourages social responsibility and constant improvement as you learn from experience and acknowledge success. (Olckers, Gibbs & Duncan 2007: 3-4) Reflection can boost learning by stimulating awareness of our feelings and practices. This allows health professionals to cope with unfamiliar circumstances and conflicts.