The Importance Of Reflection In Nursing

Reflecting on an issue or situation is taking serious thought and consideration of what happened and how one could behave differently or respond differently. So simply, reflection is the ability to turn a negative into a positive. This is incredibly important in nursing practice as when we make a mistake, learn a different technique or a situation happens that we feel we could have handled better, reflection allows us to look back where we went wrong and how we could correct ourselves in the future. Reflection can make an nurse more confident and knowledgeable with patient care as well as with every day nursing situations. Even more so, it can be what makes a nurse into an incredible nurse.
Unfortunately, many mistakes are possible when caring …show more content…
However, as a nurse it is important to realise these errors and correct them before harm is caused (Rafter et al., 2015). Furthermore, although errors are both part of medical practice and training many individuals who have roles in health care have claimed that to avoid the error from being repeated a process of reflection is required (Fischer et al., 2006). Thus why, these circumstances are important as they promote reflection (Ruth-Sahd, 2003). Reflection is incredibly important as it helps a nurse make an informed decision, develop their rationale for practice, avoid self-hatred for their mistakes and help them to become emotionally grounded (Ruth-Sahd, 2003). Furthermore, these mistakes, whatever they may be, can create a positive as the underlying cause will be reviewed to find system improvement to prevent the error happening again (Rafter et al., 2015). Thus why it is important that we experience a mistake and after a process of reflection we turn a negative into a positive (Williams, 2009) because as stated errors are inevitable (Fischer et al., 2006). Furthermore, many believe they learn better from mistakes they themselves experience (Fischer et al.,