I have always been a thinker but throughout my time at university I have undertaken course work, exams and problem based scenarios which have greatly sharpened my critical thinking and reflection skills. Instead of focusing on proposed meanings or biographical backgrounds, using this skill has helped me to develop and to continuously ask “why, how, who, what and when” on many different levels.
According to Boud et al (1985) reflection is used on various daily activities such as discussions, professional practice and thoughts, as it prompts the individual to think about what has happened, the feelings that occurred in both them or others involved. Reflection can be used to improve the practice of an individual or those around them, for personal satisfaction or criticism of themselves and others.
Description
In this instance, having recently undertaken a new Higher Education course in conjunction with my work place, I was given seven work based competencies in my department to complete. These competencies varied from core competencies set by the university and also three adapted to the department in which I worked. For example; mine were based around ECG monitoring or Coronary Interventions because I work in Cardiac. On top of these seven competencies, this semester also entailed a variety of essays, exams and presentations all of which came with a deadline. Each competency needed to be assessed for skill, attitude and knowledge and were assessed by my clinical work place supervisor and also my university work based leaner (WBL).
Being new at my job made this first semester extremely challenging, as not only did I need to be deemed competent at certain aspects of my role within such a short period of time but I also needed to learn the role from scratch.
When meeting with my work based learner for the first time we set future dates to meet up, in order for all competencies to be competed and signed off. I worked out how many weeks I had in between my meetings and basing this around my competencies it gave me a time frame on how long I had to work on each set competency. Within a couple of weeks, which felt like days, my second meeting was already here and I successfully had three of my competencies signed off by both my supervisors.
The next meeting which was arranged for two weeks’ time came around with in no time, during this meeting yet another two competencies were successfully completed leaving me with a further two to complete and then I was finished for this semester.
I was set to go on training courses which were both based around my final two competencies; these would have given me the knowledge to back up the skills for each one. Unfortunately both courses were cancelled, which resulted in me being nowhere near deemed as competent in either. I had to therefore postpone my final meeting and ask for an alternate date within two weeks’ time; fortunately my WBL was able to offer me a later date in order for me to successfully complete them. As it was coming up to Christmas and everyone was going on annual leave, I was extremely fortunate to be able to be given an extension to work on these as failure to meet the deadline on the hand in of your portfolio resulted in a failure of the whole semester.
Despite having now successfully completed each and every one, I can’t express how at the time this made me feel and the sense of panic I had. I had put a lot of hard work into each one and to obtain a failure because of poor time management on my behalf was extremely distressing and upsetting. All I kept thinking about at the time was, What if? Why didn’t I do that differently? How could I have managed it better?
Although this wasn’t a good experience, I am going to take as much as I can from this, learn about it and turn it around into a positive for next semester. I am going to highly reflect on what went wrong and what went right throughout the semester to enable me to not only successfully complete each competency within a set time frame but also to allow myself some leeway should anything arise.
Having already started to look at various ways I can do this, I have looked at various different types of models of reflection and bought myself a journal. I am now going to record everything that happens on a daily basis within this, making sure I document what I did, why I did it and my reasoning behind doing it.
I believe writing a reflective journal daily will help me to look back at my daily activities and show me what I have achieved and what I haven’t. I can therefore spend a little time out within the evenings to work on what I can do differently the next day and work on how I can achieve it.
This experience at university has not only shown me how important it is to reflect on my future studies but also how I can use it within my work place. For example; a patient was brought down to the department for a procedure and upon returning to the ward it was brought to the attention of our manager that the patient in fact had not been consented. Numerous members of the team had failed to identify this error, resulting in an investigation and an incident form being completed. Reflection in this instance was used as a team de-briefing as we discussed the event, what happened, why it happened and how it can be prevented in the future. Protocols and policies have now been put into place within our department to stop any future reoccurrences happening.
It is said that the ideal process of learning is an alteration between action and reflection (Korthagen 2001) and although this was a rare incident, it has encouraged me to keep to constantly reflecting on my daily encounters. Doing this I am taking action and reflecting on my own experiences and thinking; what could I have done better? In future how will I do better? What shall I do differently tomorrow? Gaining this information maybe a complex skill, but it will certainly help me to identify patterns, make connections therefore help me make the right decisions.
Conclusion
Reflection has so far taught me to have an open mind about my actions and theories and to recognise that there are many different ways in which reflection can be used as a learning tool.
Learning to reflect and using these two experiences will assist with my future studies and also help me to develop within my work role, as it has given me the knowledge to be able to assess and prioritise what is important at that point in time and how I can improve any situations or revisions should they arise, for example; cancellation of courses. In future I will take charge of what it is I need to achieve, when I need to achieve it by and how I am going to achieve it. I will no longer wait for it to come to me, I will go out to get it, utilise it and reflect on it myself, turning any negatives to into a future positive. Any further training courses will be an added bonus to my role and not be the basis of my knowledge. I will use my time effectively, reflecting on which aspect of my work will take the longest and manage it accordingly.
I will become a Realist rather than a Dreamer! (see appendix).
Word Count: 1649
References
Boud D, Walker D and Keogh R (1985) Reflection: turning experience into learning. London: Croom Helm.
Fish D and Twinn S (1997) Quality clinical supervision in health care professions: principled approaches to practice. Oxford: Butterworth Heinimann.
Gibbs G (1988) Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. Oxford: Further Educational Unit.
Korthagen, F. 2001. Linking Practice and Theory: The Pedagogy of Realistic Teacher Education. USA: Lawrence Erlbaum Associates, Inc.
http://www.nursingtimes.net/nursing-practice/204502.article 10/11/2012 15:33
Appendix
I have learnt that an important part of the reflective process is to plan for changes in my behaviour; Walt Disney tackled this creative thinking strategy by devising three stages based on three characters:
The Dreamer: looks towards ideas in the future and imagines how it may look or feel. What if? I wish and just imagine?
The Realist: Looking at how you can turn the dream into something practical. How can I? Do I have enough time?
The Critic: Someone logical who will evaluate the plan, look for potential problems or missing links. That’s not going to work! What happens when?
These different characters are needed in order to plan and learn effectively, it therefore requires different learning synthesis for these to be developed. You cannot avoid possible problems or refine ideas until the means of these ideas have been turned to concrete. You therefore cannot turn something into concrete until new ideas and goals have been formed ().
by
karriewallace (student)
