Spring 2017: Reflective Practice and Personal Growth in SNPG962

This essay presents a student's reflective journey throughout a semester of a clinical excellence course, detailing the identification and achievement of personal learning outcomes. Initially overwhelmed by the subject's learning outcomes, the student faced challenges in note-taking, referencing, and academic literature searching. Through online writing courses, peer support, and stress management techniques, the student improved in these areas. A significant aspect of the learning process was the implementation of reflective practice, utilizing journals and reflective models to evaluate experiences and integrate theory with practice. The student concludes with a self-assessment of skills acquired, highlighting the importance of reflection in both professional and personal development, and emphasizing the ongoing nature of learning. This essay is available on Desklib, where students can find a wealth of study resources including past papers and solved assignments.

Introduction
While I was starting the semester, I was overwhelmed with seeing the learning outcomes of
the subject. As a new student in the semester I took several lessons and tests in which I
couldn’t perform well. So, I was afraid that I won’t be able to meet the subject learning
outcomes. But with the motivation of my mentor and help of peers, I gained my confidence
back to do well in the semester. I realised that my overcoming my personal challenges, I can
remove the barrier which were hindering me from meeting the subject learning outcomes.
This assignment is prepared to present a brief overview of the learning outcomes that I could
identify and achieve through this entire semester.
Discussion
I identified certain personal learning outcomes with the help of my mentors during the
semester. I observed that I could make the most of my classroom lectures as I lacked the
abilities of taking notes of the lessons during the lecture given by the teacher. I mainly
emphasised on writing the entire information provided by the professor lecture slides. I had
this habit from past where I wrote down everything due to the fear that if I did not write it
then I will forget it in future. This habit decreased my ability to listen intently and actually
understand the topic taught by the professor (Redman & Maples, 2017). I found hard to strike
a balance between writing the important information and understanding the lecture. Also, one
of the subject learning outcomes was to write assignment on different topics. In that area I
found difficulty in referencing the work. I had very little previous experience with different
reference style therefore; I was unable to meet the criteria of correct referencing while writing
the paper. My scores were graded low due to the inaccurately or inadequately referenced
assignments. Another personal learning outcome for me was searching the suitable academic
literature resource. I was unable to hunt the appropriate learning material online for different

topics. I was overwhelmed with numerous results that displayed and I couldn’t filter the
useful ones. It was challenging and time-consuming to select the best possible data resource
for my study on a topic. I had difficulty in identifying the correct keywords for a search and I
was also uncertain about which search engine to use for searching.
I identified these personal as well as subject learning outcomes. I believed that by reinforcing
my personal learning needs I will be able to achieve the subject learning outcomes and
perform well in the semester. To accomplish this, I utilised several approaches. I found out
several free writing courses available online and I enrolled myself which suited the best as
per my academic discipline. By learning through this course, I was able to tackle the issue of
notes taking and preparing essays. I made efforts to write on a wide range of topics pertaining
to my field. It not helped me in improving my technical writing but also develop an
understanding of various topics. I wrote the essays and I also attempted at referencing it so
that I could to practice different types of referencing styles and build an expertise on the
referencing system as an unreferenced work is unacceptable in any facility. I improved in the
area of searching abilities with the help of a friend. My friend helped me in understanding the
wrong approaches that I was using and how should I use my abilities to do R&D on a
particular topic with the help of various examples.
One of the root cause of my underperformance initially was that I used to get stresses with
slightest of threshold and in the stressed condition I was not able to get any task done. So one
of the personal learning outcomes was to be more patient with myself whenever I could feel
that my stress level was increasing. So, I reminded myself that I want to improve and advance
with each assignment, and not get bothered over each and every issue where I cannot quite
understand (Stewart, et.al, 2015). Another important observation made by me was that while
writing the assignments and searching for data on a topic, I noticed that a huge volume of
information was retrieved from the news websites. This observation led me to define another

personal learning outcome for me which was to be updated with the current affairs of the
world especially on the Health and Social Care domain. I had no idea that the mainstream
news addressed the topics of health and social care so commonly in the news, therefore
decided to cultivate the habit of daily newspaper reading.
However, the most important aspect of my learning was learning to reflect on my actions. I
maintained a journal with the help of one of my peer to reflect on the day’s important
activities. At several occasions I also used various reflective models in order to evaluate an
incident thoroughly. I believe reflection was an important part of academic, professional and
personal success as it will allow me to understand myself in a better way, emphasise on my
strengths and work accordingly in the future. I perceived reflection as an active process of
investigating, assessing and reviewing the experiences by stressing on the previous learning
and theoretical concepts. I believe that learning to reflect will help me in forming the future
actions as it can help me in transforming the experiences gained from observing into
authentic learning. So, reflection will help me in integrating the practice or experience with
the theories that have been learned in the classroom.
By reflecting I also shared the knowledge with my other peers to help find out the solutions
of challenging and complicated problems in the group activities. In that way I learnt to
behave and practice appropriately in inter-professional associations. Similarly i can identify
my strengths and weaknesses from reflection which further enables me to enhance the
development in the areas that needs improvement. I realised through the entire semester that I
gained self-awareness as a student and as a person and therefore reflection gave me
opportunities for professional development and personal growth (Paget, 2001). The reflective
practice can be utilised to re-define the understanding of professional knowledge. It can also
be involved in the development of personal knowledge or self-awareness. Further, it can be
implemented to evaluate the correctness of our actions. It is also used to bridge the gap

between tacit knowledge and considered action. Apart from professional improvement, I
could also focus on my personal development by cultivating self-awareness (AH, 2001). The
focus of the reflection determines the outcome of the reflection like if the focus of reflection
is improvement in patient care, it helps to expand and develop clinical knowledge and skills. I
could audit my own actions of the classroom and training by reflecting on the incidents
(Hinett & Weeden, 2010). By reflecting on my learning and actions, I understood that there is
no end point to learning from their practice.
I believe through the entire semester I learnt to identify my learning needs and develop
strategies to meet them. I ensured that I am making progress by timely review of my journals.
I believe I was able to overcome my fear which I felt at the start of the semester and I could
also manage my stress in a better way. My behaviour of apprehension also changed and I was
motivated to learn. I transformed from a scared and overwhelmed student to a proactive
student who was ready to take necessary actions to perform well in the semester.
Conclusion
To conclude, I leant the following skills with varying degrees of achievement level.
Skill learnt Excellent Good Satisfactory Poor
Notes-taking _
Referencing _
Stress
management
_
Reading _
Reflection _

During the entire semester, I achieved both personal as well as professional growth by
learning various skills. These skills will help in the practice in health and social care.
Reflection was one of the most important personal learning outcomes that I could identify
and achieve. In future, I will try to always use a suitable reflective model to analyse the
experience. I think that without applying a model to reflect, there is a possibility that I might
have stressed on just one aspect specifically a negative aspect, which limited the scope of the
benefits of detailed and wider exploration (Ashby, 2006). The skills I learned through the
experience will also help in avoiding the preventable errors I might have committed in the
absence of this learning. These skills will help me in my practice in health and social care
practice to maintain a healthy relationship with my team members and perform my duty by
offering the superior quality of care to the service users. However, I still lack the abilities to
develop a reading habit. In the future I will adopt an improved and realistic strategy to ensure
that I read newspaper every day.
References
AH, C., 2001. Private thoughts in public spheres: issues in reflection and reflective practices
in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing, 36(4), pp.512-19.
Ashby, C., 2006. Models for reflective practice. Practice Nurse, 32(10), pp.28-30.
Hinett, K. & Weeden, P., 2010. How Am I Doing?: Developing critical self-evaluation in
trainee teachers. Quality in Higher Education, 6(3), pp.245-57.
Paget, T., 2001. Reflective practice and clinical outcomes: practitioners' views on how
reflective practice has influenced their clinical practice. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 10(2),
pp.204-14.

Redman, P. & Maples, W., 2017. Good Essay Writing: a Social Sciences Guide. London:
Sage.
Stewart, G., Seifert, T. A. & Rolheiser, C., 2015. Anxiety and self-efficacy’s relationship
with undergraduate students’ perceptions of the use of metacognitive writing strategies. The
Canadian Journal for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning, 6 (1), pp. 4-12.