Nursing Reflection

Reflection has been strongly advocated by the English National Board for Nursing & Midwifery (1994), and a wealth of nursing literature over the past decade had been published to improve nursing practice. Reflection is an in-depth consideration of events or situations outside of one-self, solitary, or with critical support. Burnard (1995) argues that, reflection has its roots in experiential learning, as it forms the second stage of the experiential learning cycle. Active reflection gives nurses the confidence in terms of clinical decision making. It can also be a meaning of identifying strengths and weaknesses in practice and enabling nurses to learn from their mistakes. Despite this, critics of reflection had mentioned that there is still

Reflection might lead to insight about something not noticed in time, pinpointing perhaps when the detail was missed. I believe reflection reaches the parts other forms of thinking can’t reach. Effective reflection on practice is thought to generate nursing theory and answers questions that develop nursing practice (Schön, 1983). However, there is lack of empirical evidence to support on the use of reflection in nursing. Schön, (1992), had describes two types of reflection, which is reflection in action and reflection on action. Reflection in action is important for expert nurses to avoid becoming ‘stale’ or bored and preventing burn out. Reflection in action is the hawk in our mind constantly circling over our head watching and advising on our actions while we are practicing. Reflection in action is the process whereby the practitioners recognized a new situation and think it out as it happens and improved during practice. Reflection in action or ‘thinking on your feet’ is perhaps the most familiar to nurses. It is perhaps the lack of opportunity to look at these events away from the clinical setting, and with the absence of a supervisor that adds to the stress that nurses experience in their workplace. Reflection in action is essentially reflection that is done ‘on the hoof’. It refers to the mindfulness that all nurses engage in to a greater or lesser extent when they are

According to Bright, (1996), reflection on action occurs through analysis, interpretation and recombination of information about the experience in the new perspectives’, where this happened retrospectively and away from the practice area. Schon (1983) had argued that, reflection is an important learning strategy by which nurses can describe, analyze and evaluate a critical incident which called as a reflective practice. A critical incident is defined as, an incident which result in an individual suffering actual or potential harm. In contrast, reflection on action is essentially about looking back on a significant event and attempting to distinguish ‘the wood from the tree’ that is identifying positive and negative aspects of nursing interventions, opportunities and threats in the clinical environment. The terms of responding to such complacency, purposeful reflection on action is an essential tool as it allows practitioners to regain control and gain perspective on what might be highly charged clinical events (Graham,