· There has been a recent increasing interest in re¯ective practice in nursing. There is a wealth of literature about its apparent advantages and bene®ts, but very little empirical research into clinical outcomes consequent to re¯ective practice.· This study attempts an initial exploration into this area. A retrospective, threephase, multi-method study in a single department of nursing was conducted. The research sample comprised students and former students of the department who had previously participated in an assessed re¯ective practice course or module.· Years of experience, speciality or academic level did not have a signi®cant in¯uence, but the effectiveness of the facilitator was an important factor. · The results suggest that re¯ective practice is regarded highly and that most respondents could identify signi®cant, long-term changes to clinical practice resulting from it.

There has been a recent increasing interest in reflective practice in nursing. There is a wealth of literature about its apparent advantages and benefits, but very little empirical research into clinical outcomes consequent to reflective practice. This study attempts an initial exploration into this area. A retrospective, three-phase, multi-method study in a single department of nursing was conducted. The research sample comprised students and former students of the department who had previously participated in an assessed reflective practice course or module. Years of experience, speciality or academic level did not have a significant influence, but the effectiveness of the facilitator was an important factor. The results suggest that reflective practice is regarded highly and that most respondents could identify significant, long-term changes to clinical practice resulting from it.

Burn injuries are associated with depression. Patients show variable incidence of postburn depression. The purpose of this study was to use anonymized, routinely collected health-related data in Wales (United Kingdom) to estimate the incidence of depression postburns. The incidence of postburn depression was estimated using routinely collected health data of complete years (1999-2007) from all general practitioner surgeries in Swansea and all National Health Service hospitals in Wales. This had been collected, double encrypted, and stored at the Secure Anonymised Information Linkage databank of the Health Information Research Unit for Wales at College of Medicine, Swansea University. The incidence of depression within 5 years after the burn injury was 5.9% in patients registered with general practitioner surgeries in Swansea. The incidence was 7.4% in female patients and 4.3% in male patients. The incidence of depression within 5 years after the burn was 3.2% in patients admitted to National Health Service hospitals in Wales. The incidence was 4.5% in female patients and 2.6% in male patients. The advantages of using the anonymized, routinely collected data were avoiding bias, protecting patients' confidentiality, including all patients thus minimizing attrition and greatly reduced costs. It is concluded that anonymized, routinely collected, health-related data may have value in monitoring postburn depression in Wales.

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