Reflective Practice in Nursing

Running head: REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN NURSING
Reflective practice in nursing
Name of the student:
Name of the university:
Author note:

1REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN NURSING
Reflection in a concept within the professional clinical practice which has a significant
impact on the health care delivery, along with that quality and safety of the care provided to the
patients. It has to be mentioned in this context that providing health care to the diverse patient
populations is a profession that demands a continuous development and in order to continue to
improve the practice standards and adhere to the ever-changing care delivery guidelines it is
crucial for the health care delivery constructs to be able to revisit their own practice details and
discover their strengths and weaknesses (Devenny & Duffy, 2014). The reflection or reflective
practice provides the health care providers with the optimal frameworks for revisiting their
practice and maintain a practice that is concurrent with the latest guidelines and addresses each
of the care needs of the patient population. This essay will attempt to present a position statement
on the multifactorial benefits associated with the reflective practice and how it can be
incorporated with success in the heath care scenario to ensure best practice. This essay will
define reflective practice, the components of reflective practice in nursing, how effective it is in
clinical setting, the benefits and pitfalls if any, and concluding with a verdict. The position of the
authors in this regard is that reflection is an essential component for ensuring patient safety
and meeting the quality benchmarks for the care delivery across different care settings.
Reflective practice can be defined by the method of studying, exploring and analyzing the
different factors associated with the experience of a professional event and be able to discover
any flaws and improve the performance statistics. It has been considered to be a tool that is
exceptionally essential for the professionals to continue the learning process or the professional
development all throughout their lives. When applied to the professional scenario of nursing
reflection has to be the practice that has fundamental importance. Researchers are of the opinion
that reflection is a tool that has immense influence in both nursing practice and education all

2REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN NURSING
across the globe. As explained by the Hayes et al. (2015), reflection is a practice that is essential
for a care delivery practice that is both effective and patient centered. Hence, reflection has been
associated with the practice scenario with a considerable emphasis to a point where the
legislative practice standards and the protocols have incorporated the reflective practice as an
essential segment of the professional roles and responsibilities as well. According to the standard
of the registered nurse practice standards issued by the NMBA or the Nursing and Midwifery
board of Australia, the nurses are required to “develop practice through reflection on
experiences, knowledge, actions, feelings and beliefs to identify how these shape practice”.
Similarly the code of conduct by the NMBA and the code of ethics also mandate the nursing
profession to incorporate reflection into the aspect of practice to ensure improved safety and
effectiveness of the car provided (Nursingmidwiferyboard.gov.au, 2018).
Exploring the components of reflection in the nursing practice, it has to be mentioned that
reflective practice is facilitated in the nursing care scenario by the use of various reflective
models (Sherwood & McNeill, 2017). One of the most commonly and abundantly utilized
Models in the reflective practice includes the Gibbs reflection models. The main components
associated with this particular model includes description of the event, feelings of the
professional, analysis of the key issues of the event, evaluation of the positive and negative
aspects associated with the event and finally an action plan based on the strengths and weak
nesses discovered regarding the nursing professional with regards to the care skills. Other
notable refection models that are utilized in the nursing care scenario includes the reflection
mode by Akin and Murphy, with components description of the situation, analysis of the feelings
and knowledge, evaluation ad identification of the learning needs. The third component of
reflective practice that is a little less commonly utilized in the present day nursing care scenario