You need to provide a 2000 word (+10%) reflective account that focuses on your professional development and uses experiences from all of your cross field workbooks as evidence of that development.
You should choose a theme to organize your reflection for examples the development of compassion, developing confidence in their own practice, communication and assessment skills.
You should not describe four separate examples from each of the other fields of practice. By this it is meant that you should not write four separate reflections but the examples should be integrated by the theme of your professional development and flow together.
• Discuss your experiences related to the FOUR fields (as per your workbooks but not specifically the experiences in your workbooks) in relation to your theme
• Refer to four individual events and four individual clients – compare and contrast your experiences in relation to your chosen theme.
• Remember this is one essay based upon the theme and not individual reflections about each experience.
The focus of the assignment is on the analysis of your development and the critical discussion of the evidence base but there does need to be enough detail of your practice to act as a basis for this critical reflection.
For the critical discussion of the evidence base this means making an evaluation of its worth. Think about the source of your evidence, any gaps there may and alternative approaches. So for example
I demonstrated my understanding of the patient’s distress by taking his hand and this is supported by Smith’s (2014) work on therapeutic touch that suggests this develops the relationship between nurse and patient and shows compassion. However, Smith (2014) presents the author’s professional opinion supported by references whereas McGill (2016) conducted qualitative research with 42 participants that suggests some patients are uncomfortable holding hands with the nurse which means I need to consider this for my future practice.
Or
Although at the time I thought I demonstrated compassion and thoughtfulness towards my patient by holding their hand McGill’s (2016) research suggests that this may not be the case. This was a well thought out study that demonstrated rigour in its findings and provides a sound basis for evidence based practice (Hughes, 2015).
The references are fictional but you can see here that the what the literature says has not been presented but it has been considered and discussed.
Do not use a model of reflection as the word limit will mean you spend too much time on description and not enough on analysis; this will limit the grade you can achieve.
