Guided reflective writing as a teaching strategy to develop nursing student clinical judgment

Abstract

Background: Nurse educators need strategies to help develop nursing students' clinical judgment skills to practice safely. Guided reflective writing is an active learning strategy that can increase learning and promote clinical judgment in patient care. Purpose: The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study, guided by Tanner's Evidence Based Clinical Judgment Model, was to examine nursing student and faculty perspectives of the benefits and challenges of guided reflective writing for clinical judgment development following clinical experiences. Method: Junior-and senior-level students participated in an open-ended survey regarding their experience of the guided reflective writing assignment postclinical.A focus group gained faculty perspectives of the assignment.Results: A final theme for each student group was developed: (1) organizes basic nursing care (Junior One students) and (2) sense of wholeness (Senior Two students). Progression in clinical judgment from Junior One to Senior Two students was noted. Faculty concurred with students' perspectives with their final theme, encourages deep thinking. Conclusion:The results supported guided written reflection and clinical judgment development as key components to enhancing students' knowledge and preparation for complex nursing care. Guided reflective writing can be used as a reflection activity for clinical judgment development in a variety of settings including hospital, simulation, case studies, or virtual simulation.

Health professionals and students’ experiences of reflective writing in learning: A qualitative meta-synthesis

“…Users understood that RWcould be a powerful means of developing empathy and developing their philosophy of care: this consideration is in line with a recent study from Ng and colleagues [24]. Additionally, some authors [4,17] stressed these empathetic skills and "humanistic"competencies as essential to care for patients effectively [56]. Professionals were amazed how negativity could generate learning through RW.…”

The experiences of frontline nurses in Wuhan: A qualitative analysis of nurse online diaries during the COVID‐19 pandemic

“…Existing research on diaries has mainly used daily activity diaries (e.g., Oddsdóttir & Sveinsdóttir, 2011;Sveinsdóttir et al, 2018) and clinic diaries (e.g., Hoeve et al, 2018;Johansson et al, 2019;Munyewende & Rispel, 2014) to explore the work-related experiences in clinical settings, and also has investigated the use of reflective diaries in nurse education (e.g., Hwang et al, 2018;Smith, 2021). This line of research was centered on the use of diaries among nurses.…”

“…Using diaries can offer a better understanding of nurses (Hoeve et al, 2018). Nursing dairies can help trainers understand nurses and develop nursing students' clinical judgement skills (Smith, 2021), and the process of writing about their emotions in diaries has healing effects (e.g., Glass et al, 2019). For example, Sveinsdóttir et al (2018) analyzed nurses' daily activity diaries to describe the work activities of nurse managers in Iceland.…”

Effectiveness of online learning in improving optometry student's reflective abilities

“…Reflection encourages the healthcare practitioner to reframe problems, re-question assumptions and contextualize problems from different perspectives, facilitating deliberate thought processes that gives meaning to clinical experience. 13 For students, it stimulates the deep learning process. Reflections help to actualize the real, direct learning experiences, facilitating clearer understanding and application of the theoretical concepts.…”