Essay: Reflection, reflective practice and its importance to nurses

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Student Name: Radhika Chand
Essay title: Reflection, reflective practice and its importance to nurses
Word count- 853 (excluding title page and reference list)
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The essay deals with the reflection and reflective practice and discusses its importance
for RNs. The essay highlights the key skills and attitudes required for nursing profession.
The essay lastly presents the career action plan. The purpose of the essay is to understand the
value of reflective practice in nursing and identify the plan for career success.
In nursing practice reflection is considered key skill. Engaging in reflection is the
process of making sense of a workplace situation/event, comprehend and appreciate
experiences. A reflective process consists of the three basic elements that are- “Why, what
and how”. The “what” in reflection, refers to the self evaluation as a nurse. It helps to judge
the standards of practice. Health care is the complex setting and nurses must be endowed with
adequate skills, knowledge to process vast information on time. Thus, in contemporary
nursing practice, reflection is very important to update professional skills, recognise the areas
of improvement, and consider ways of communicating with colleagues. Reflection enhances
self-awareness in nurses (Koutoukidis, Stainton & Hughson, 2013).
The “why” refers to reflecting on the situation in nursing practice that helps link
between the self-awareness and professional self-monitoring. The need to undertake
reflective practice for nurses is to understand personal values, vision and own intentions. It
aids in dealing with daily nursing challenges such as test of ethics and morals, physical and
emotional demands, and unequal power relations in workplace (Howatson-Jones, 2016).
Engaging in reflective practice is important for registered nurses as per regulatory
requirement encompassed in the “NMBA registered nurse competency standards”. The
relevance of reflection to registered nurse can be attributed to the domain of professional
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development, self appraisal, feelings and beliefs, reflection on practice and research for
practice (Daly, Speedy & Jackson, 2014). The “How” in reflection refers to strategies used for
reflection. In order to approach a situation systematically and logically there are various
frameworks for reflection. For instance Gibb’s reflective cycle by Gibbs (1988), that consists
of 6 stages starting from description of the event to action plan for eliminating the flaws.
The key skills/attributes of nurses are excellent communication skills. A registered
nurse must have active listening skills to understand patient’s problems. They have to work in
interdisciplinary team and coordinate with patients, fellow nurses and physicians. Owing to
cultural diversity in health care setting they must have knowledge of multiple languages.
Nurses must have dedication and patience for decision-making and avoid errors. Further,
critical thinking skills are essential for nurses to acquire self-sufficiency in judging patient’s
health outcomes. Critical thinking will help nurses to adapt changes in organisation and
handle an emergency or a sudden causality through quick judgement. Registered nurses must
have physical and mental endurance to deal with mental health patients who may contribute
to violence. The nurses must be responsible in actions and conduct work ethically as their
activities directly affect the patient’s life. Therefore, at the time of emergency the nurse must
be detailed oriented, attentive and vigilant (Farrell, Payne, & Heye, 2015, p.6). The NMBA
competency standards also emphasise on leadership skills as registered nurses must work in
interdisciplinary team to contribute to patient outcomes. Leadership skills are required to
solve problems, analyse the patient’s condition to make productive changes. Further,
evidence based practice is essential as per the NMC code for registered nurse. This practice
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