Part A: reflective piece (500 words) Instructions: Prior to the commencement of your reflective piece read chapter 3 “Reflection and reflective practice” from Andre, K., & Heartfield, M...

Part A: reflective piece (500 words)
Instructions:
Prior to the commencement of your reflective piece read chapter 3 “Reflection and reflective practice” from Andre, K., & Heartfield, M. (2011). Nursing and midwifery portfolios: Evidence of continuing competence (2nd ed.). Chatswood, NSW: Elsevier. You will find this chapter on e-reserve ; the link to this chapter can also be found in the Assessments folder in VU Collaborate.
Use Gibbs’s Reflective Cycle (pp. 61-64) and the “Critical incident analysis” (pp. 64-67) to model for your reflection. Carefully review the scenario on pp. 65-67 and use it as an example of how your reflective piece should be structured / written.
Background:
o “A critical incident analysis is a focused reflective activity about an incident that had meaning and learning potential. While it is common to focus on negative incidents, this need not necessarily be the case, as much can also be learnt from getting something right… There are various formats of frameworks used to deconstruct and analyse an incident, including Gibbs Reflective cycle…” (p.64)
o Critical incident reflection can be of a “one-off” event/experience or of several experiences about the same issue/focus.
o Analysing a critical incident could help you to:
“reflect-on-action” (i.e. past experience)
“reflect-in-action” (i.e. as an incidence happens)
“reflect-for-action” (i.e. actions you may wish to take in future experiences)
o The critical reflection framework is a guided process to aid analysis and increase the potential for positive outcomes. Possible outcomes from undertaking critical reflection include: Congratulation and affirmation. Even within a critical incident that someone frames as “unsuccessful” there is usually some part of an adverse situation that has been handled well and this should be acknowledged;
 Immediate action;
 Not resolved;
 No action but the person feels better talking about it.
o “In order to practice effectively as professionals, we need to understand ourselves and how we contribute to or influence outcomes and situations” (p. 51).
o Nurses have a responsibility to be reflective practitioners. This means that they need to engage in a critical reflective process of their practice in order to gain insights on how their behaviours (good or bad) influence situations and patient outcomes. Those insights are then used to modify the undesirable behaviours (Andre & Heartfield, 2011).