Reflective Practice: Key to Success for Registered Nurses (CHAR1D1801)

This essay, written by Radhika Chand, examines the critical role of reflection and reflective practice in nursing, focusing on its significance for Registered Nurses (RNs). The essay delves into the core skills and attitudes essential for success in the nursing profession, emphasizing the 'why, what, and how' of reflective processes. It highlights the importance of self-evaluation, professional development, and continuous improvement in patient care. The author presents a personal career action plan, setting SMART goals to enhance leadership and analytical skills, crucial for a successful career, particularly in geriatric care. The essay concludes by underscoring the value of reflective practice in recognizing strengths, identifying areas for improvement, and aligning with the NMBA competency standards, supported by relevant references.

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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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demands analytical skills to identify evidence and find its relevance to patient outcomes
(Melnyk et al., 2014, p.13).
Reflective practice is important to improve nursing practice by recognising strengths
and identifying areas of improvements (Howatson-Jones, 2016). My ambition is to become
successful registered nurse and establish in geriatric care. I am reflecting on my personal and
professional life to identify the personal attributes, traits and strengths and determine
SMART Goals. My areas of strength are passion about nursing, high self-motivation,
compassion, confidence, excellent verbal and written communication skills. Lack of
leadership and analytical skills are my weakness. I have the potential to become registered
nurse. Therefore, my SMART goals are- develop leadership skills and analytical skills.
Nursing is challenging practice and stiff competence would be a threat to my career. The
action plan to develop required skills in six months of time is discussed in subsequent
sections. I understand that reflective practice is useful in recognising one’s own flaws and
potential.
As per reflective practice I would like to develop leadership skills by participating
CPD activities. I will coach my juniors. CPD is mandatory for registered nurses to develop
leadership competencies (Waddell et al., 2015, p.165). I will volunteer for communities and
participate in community health promotion campaigns as it helps develop leadership skills
(Sellon et al., 2017, p.114). I will develop the analytical skills by engagement in poster
presentations. I will attend the seminars, conferences and accomplish my research project.
Engaging in peer reviewed research process will enhance health care knowledge and help
come up with new ideas for patient problems such as falls (Yost et al., 2015, p.98). For
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analytical skills, I will regularly engage in the reflective practice. Analytical skills are
required in health assessment process. Reflection will help determine the efficacy of care plan
(Howatson-Jones, 2016).
It can be concluded from the above discussion that reflective practice hold immense
importance for registered nurses. The assignment has enlightened me with benefits of
reflective practice. Upon reflecting I have realised to have skills and attributes required to be
a successful registered nurse. However, there are areas of improvement, for which I have
developed an action plan.
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References
Daly, J., Speedy, S., & Jackson, D. (Eds.). (2014) Contexts of nursing: An introduction, (4th
ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Elsevier Australia. Retrieved from:
https://books.google.co.in/books?
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+An+introduction,+(4th+ed.).+Melbourne,
+&ots=_LKwC3rFSs&sig=eCPo9CYRKoBqR4P-
fVGZcTDbrew#v=onepage&q&f=false
Farrell, K., Payne, C., & Heye, M. (2015). Integrating interprofessional collaboration skills
into the advanced practice registered nurse socialization process. Journal of
Professional Nursing, vol.31, no.1, pp.5-10.
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.profnurs.2014.05.006
Gibbs, G. (1988) Learning by doing: A guide to teaching and learning methods. Oxford.
FEU, [London]. ISBN- 1853380717 (pbk)
Howatson-Jones, L. (2016). Reflective practice in nursing. Learning Matters. Retrieved from:
https://books.google.co.in/books?
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+2016.+Reflective+practice+in+nursing.
+Learning+Matters.&ots=1kPHuOkUgC&sig=OyEDYmIoFhJpRszbXRtFHXhELRg
#v=onepage&q&f=false
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Koutoukidis, G. K., Stainton, K., & Hughson, J. (2013). Tabbner’s nursing care, (6th ed).
Elsevier Australia Retrieved from: https://books.google.co.in/books?
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%E2%80%99s+nursing+care,&ots=TuvbJHnMvB&sig=g4HhdfQIwzg1NkZCWWa
WUYUOFzM#v=onepage&q=Tabbner%E2%80%99s%20nursing%20care
%2C&f=false
Melnyk, B. M., Gallagher‐Ford, L., Long, L. E., & Fineout‐Overholt, E. (2014). The
establishment of evidence‐based practice competencies for practicing registered
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improve healthcare quality, reliability, patient outcomes, and costs. Worldviews on
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‐Based Nursing, vol.11, no.1, pp.5-15. DOI: 10.1111/wvn.12021
Sellon, A. M., Chapin, R. K., & Leedahl, S. N. (2017). Engaging Nursing Home Residents in
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pp.93-114. DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12126-016-9252-8
Waddell, J., Spalding, K., Canizares, G., Navarro, J., Connell, M., Jancar, S., ... & Victor, C.
(2015). Integrating a career planning and development program into the baccalaureate
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Yost, J., Ganann, R., Thompson, D., Aloweni, F., Newman, K., Hazzan, A., ... & Ciliska, D.
(2015). The effectiveness of knowledge translation interventions for promoting
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evidence-informed decision-making among nurses in tertiary care: a systematic
review and meta-analysis. Implementation Science, vol.10, no.1, p.98. DOI:
https://doi.org/10.1186/s13012-015-0286-1
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