Thing 17: Reflective Practice

Reflective writing is something that I have had to get increasingly used to over the last few months. This blog has been particularly helpful as it allowed me to consider reflective writing in more depth. As I am in the process of collecting evidence to add to my Chartership Portfolio reflective writing is obviously a hugely significant part of this. Also as a health librarian, the new nursing revalidation requirements to be introduced this year by the Nursing and Midwifery Council will likely mean that some of my users will want help with reflective writing in the near future.

Up until now I have found the 3 'What's' very useful. What? So What? and What now? This lends itself nicely to 3 paragraphs when writing a reflective piece. The Gibbs Reflective Cycle seems a little bit more in-depth at first glance. But the good thing about both these models is that it requires you to reflect in more depth. Probably the most difficult thing about reflective writing for me personally is trying to avoid the temptation to simply describe what I did. Awareness of these reflective models certainly helps me to focus on the deeper aspects of the reflective process when writing reflectively for my portfolio.