The Significance Of Reflective Practice In Clinical And Nursing Practice

The Importance of Relationship Between Patient and Nurse

Question:

Dsicuss about the Reflective Practice for Education and Health Physicians.

It is important to note that the quality of healthcare is established on the compelling relationship between the patient and the nurse. Care dictates that nurses ought to inquire knowledge about patients’ lives. The nurses need insight into the patients’ experience and understanding of their illness as well life situation.  Reflective Practice holds a lot of significance for education and health physicians in Australia. This can be illustrated by the increased eminence in the fresh competency-built occupational standard for nursing.  According to Horton-Deutsch and Sherwood (2017), Reflective Practice refers to affective and intellectual activities where any person especially a medical professional, engages in exploring his or her experiences so as to get a new appreciation and understanding of the profession. It ensures that healthcare professionals continue their learning as well as improve their practices. It is, therefore, worth noting that Reflective Practice is a core element of clinical supervision and reasoning as well as a principal to lasting learning excursion toward becoming an expert practitioner.  This paper endeavors to explore reflective practice, its importance, and components on the horizon of clinical and nursing practice. The paper also elucidates the value of Reflective Practice for nursing.

Reflection can aid in clinical practice by demonstrating day-to-day learning through student-nurse education. It can also be essential for processing a thought after a precarious incident. Reflective Practice encompasses several skills including critical thinking, self-awareness, observation, taking others’ perspectives as well as self-evaluation (Andreou, Papastavrou &Merkouris, 2014). Notably, Reflective Practice integrates these skills into understanding and comprehending goal setting and future planning.  Through reflective thinking, medical professionals survey patients to advance, anticipate and amplify their well-being and prosperity. The medical caretaker should be steady and helpful, communicating with the patient to investigate his or her encounters and medical issues. The medical caretaker must have the capacity to utilize theoretical and practical knowledge, and the improvement of self to encourage the development of this helping relationship (Huntley, Cropley, Gilbourne, Sparkes, & Knowles, 2014).  The reflective approach is applied through effective communication with the patients and understanding the cause of their conditions. It is also applied through critical thinking and analyzing to establish the different components of the situation at hand.

Reflective practice significantly benefits the patients. The nurses associate with patients as well as their kinsfolks in their routine work. Every so often, patients encounter problems in expressing themselves, particularly those suffer from dementia, stroke or those who are unconscious or come from diverse cultures.  Such situations require sensitivity in deducing the patients’ requirements. Moon, (2013), advocates that refection thinking would enable the nurses to interpret what a patient may need and then provide proper services. Reflective practice would enable the nurses to employ empathy to expedite patient interaction. Green, Wyllie, and Jackson (2014) suggest that reflective practice is a vital strategy which enhances continuing professional development as well as care delivery.  Reflective thinking significantly contributes towards patients’ quality care as well as service delivery. Through supporting reflective practices, patients’ service delivery can substantially increase.  Reflective practice also ensures patient-centered care, which provides a distinctive advantage of daily and consistent assessment of a patient’s condition. Nurses who have practiced reflective thinking help patients who suffer from critical conditions in making decisions regarding their health (Adamson & Dewar, 2015). Outstandingly, these nurses can identify any slightest change in a patient’s health condition and can proactively change or alter care or treatment when the need arises.

Reflective Practice and its Significance for Nursing

Reflective practice enables nurses to give the necessary knowledge of a patient’s condition, therefore, managing the patient’s ailment as well as preventing future reoccurrences. Through this helping relationship, nurses are capable of providing vigilant guidelines for self-management thereby benefiting patients’ quality of life (Tutticci, Lewis, and Coyer, 2016). Additionally, reflective practice helps nurses to build a respectful and trusting relationship with patients, via emotional empathy.  The registered nurse practice is founded by engaging patients in an effective professional and therapeutic relationship. The RN standards compel nurses to communicate effectively, and respect individuals’ rights, beliefs, values, culture, and dignity (Dalton, Gee, &Levett-Jones, 2015). It, therefore, goes without saying that through reflective practice, nurses can double their ability in regards to patients’ dignity and cultural values.  Reflection helps medical practitioners to understand and comprehend patients’ experiences and expedite care delivery. 

Tutticci, Lewis, and Coyer (2016) describe reflection as a process which medical specialists can employ to emphasize tactic or hidden knowledge. He goes ahead to say that a reflection is a tool for establishing and developing practical skills and knowledge. It is seen as one of the ways of taking a step back and thinking about a scenario and one’s self to attain a new perception of any given situation (Melnyk et al. 2014). Possession of reflective thinking enables professionals to establish knowledge and meaning which can guide their various actions in practice. Reflective practice has got significant benefits regarding the delivery of patient-centered care and helps clinicians to evaluate the need for every patient accurately.

The key components of reflective skills include critical thinking, self-awareness, observation, critical analysis, synthesis, and self-evaluation. Firstly, self- evaluation or assessment is an individualistic process where one tests himself or herself, habitually over time. Self-evaluation is an essential component of professional education as well as reflective practice (Ryan & Ryan, 2013). Whereas one can get others’ input and embrace their opinions and observations, in the long run one has to judge oneself. Self-assessment is never meant to be self-afflict for previous misdemeanors; however, it ought to be future-oriented.  In contrary, synthesis involves the ability to incorporate new knowledge. This is important in developing a unique perspective or a fresh insight on a situation. The skill of synthesis helps in accomplishing pleasing and reasonable outcome from the reflection. Notably, this might encompass the development of a new way of thinking or clarification of a matter. According to Bulman and Schutz (2013), synthesis covers making choices regarding the relationship of new notions and past values and beliefs. Self-awareness involves the conscious of an individual’s character, for instance, values and beliefs. Remarkably, self-awareness underpins the whole process of reflection practice since it allows persons to see themselves in an absolute position. It allows one to analyze his or her personal values, beliefs, and feelings.

How Reflective Thinking Helps Medical Practitioners with Care Delivery

On the other hand, critical analysis encompasses the separation of a whole situation into various parts.  Reflection would involve undertaking an in-depth examination of a patient in order to understand his or her conditions wholly. Analyzing and acknowledging one's feelings, values, and beliefs is an essential and fundamental element of reflection practice if the outcome has to have a quality of patient care and positive impact on professional learning (Bulman, &Schutz, 2013). Sometimes, the healthcare professionals may get involved in unique situations where the knowledge and skills needed for understanding and solving the situation may depend on specific components. The healthcare professionals have to recognize that different situations may be influenced by behavior, attitudes, and feelings. Reflective practice engagement, therefore, requires different skills of critical analysis including identification and illumination of existing knowledge relevant to the situation.  Bulman and Schutz, (2013) argue that critical analysis would involve exploring of feelings and attitudes about the situation and identify as well as challenging the assumptions already made. Lastly, exploring and imaging some of the alternatives options of action.

In conclusion, reflective practice is a tool which is regularly utilized as a significant aspect of students-nurse education as well as in clinical practices. It can aid in demonstrating common knowledge or learning and is beneficial for the processing of thoughts after a crucial occurrence. The capacity of becoming reflective in practice has turned to be an indispensable skill for healthcare professionals, and many individuals are in the process of acquiring the skills (Hegney et al. 2015). It is important to note that the employment of reflective practice is currently found in several of the other allied healthcare disciplines such as the Radiography. Reflective practice guarantees that health care experts are proceeding with their everyday learning and enhancing their training and practice. It is worth noting that reflective thinking has a significant impact on human services today and is winding up progressively and becoming known. Patients can receive quality service delivery through reflective practice. The nurses are able to identify and help patients who suffer from critical conditions through reflective practice. It is, therefore, vital for all healthcare professionals to acquire reflective practice through furthering their education so that they can provide proper service delivery to clients.

References

Adamson, E., & Dewar, B. (2015). Compassionate Care: Student nurses' learning through reflection and the use of story. Nurse education in practice, 15(3), 155-161.

Andreou, C., Papastavrou, E., &Merkouris, A. (2014). Learning styles and critical thinking relationship in baccalaureate nursing education: a systematic review. Nurse education today, 34(3), 362-371.

Bulman, C., &Schutz, S. (Eds.). (2013). Reflective practice in nursing.John Wiley & Sons.

Dalton, L., Gee, T., &Levett-Jones, T. (2015). Using clinical reasoning and simulation-based education to'flip'the Enrolled Nurse curriculum. Australian Journal of Advanced Nursing, The, 33(2), 29.

Green, J., Wyllie, A., & Jackson, D. (2014). Electronic portfolios in nursing education: a review of the literature. Nurse education in practice, 14(1), 4-8.

Hegney, D. G., Craigie, M., Hemsworth, D., Osseiran?Moisson, R., Aoun, S., Francis, K., & Drury, V. (2014). Compassion satisfaction, compassion fatigue, anxiety, depression and stress in registered nurses in Australia: study 1 results. Journal of Nursing Management, 22(4), 506-518.

Horton-Deutsch, S., & Sherwood, G. D. (2017). Reflective practice: Transforming education and improving outcomes (Vol. 2). Sigma Theta Tau.

Huntley, E., Cropley, B., Gilbourne, D., Sparkes, A., & Knowles, Z. (2014).Reflecting back and forwards: An evaluation of peer-reviewed reflective practice research in sport. Reflective practice, 15(6), 863-876.

Melnyk, B. M., Gallagher?Ford, L., Long, L. E., &Fineout?Overholt, E. (2014). The establishment of evidence?based practice competencies for practicing registered nurses and advanced practice nurses in real?world clinical settings: proficiencies to improve healthcare quality, reliability, patient outcomes, and costs. Worldviews on Evidence?Based Nursing, 11(1), 5-15.

Moon, J. A. (2013). Reflection in learning and professional development: Theory and practice. Routledge.

Ryan, M., & Ryan, M. (2013).Theorising a model for teaching and assessing reflective learning in higher education. Higher Education Research & Development, 32(2), 244-257.

Tutticci, N., Lewis, P. A., & Coyer, F. (2016).Measuring third year undergraduate nursing students' reflective thinking skills and critical reflection self-efficacy following high fidelity simulation: A pilot study. Nurse education in practice, 18, 52-59.