Reflective practice

This course is part of the RCOG Core Knowledge series.

Reflective practice is recognised as an essential attribute of being a professional. How this is achieved and demonstrated in your clinical practice will help ensure you continue to learn from your clinical experience for the benefit of your own professional development as well as your patients' wellbeing.

Demonstration of the ability to reflect has now been incorporated into licensing and revalidation processes both in the UK and abroad. The ability to critically analyse and evaluate clinical experience enables you as a practitioner to bring together clinical observations, past experiences and relevant knowledge to help you reliably make safe, timely and ethical clinical judgments with your patients.

Reflective thinking also enables you to be aware of the influence that your own value system has on your clinical practice - As Plato highlighted:

'The unreflected life is not worth living'.

Reflective practice is core to the clinical and educational service you deliver as a professional obstetrician and gynaecologist:

It is central to patients' safety, and clinical governance.

It is about ensuring continued excellence in your practice from a clinical, educational and ethical perspective.

It is about monitoring your continuing professional development and ensuring revalidation with the GMC in the UK.

Reflective clinical practice goes beyond the expectations of the 'narrow language' of competency. Thinking reflectively improves your standards of practice and enables advances in practice to be made. The Donaldson Report in 2002 on 'Building a Safer NHS' highlighted the risky nature of healthcare practice and the need to provide a culture of incident reporting to ensure patient safety. In the context of obstetrics and gynaecology, one of the specific areas targeted for action in the report was a 25% reduction in the number of instances of harm that resulted in litigation. Reflective practice helps to minimise adverse events in your practice; it helps you to recognise when there is something 'not quite right' and helps to 'make sense of it'. It also helps you to recognise when your practice has been exemplary and ensures you build and develop your professional excellence.

Professionals in practice can contribute to harm reduction in the organisation by ensuring they keep up to date with their practice (continuing professional development). This can be achieved by increasing awareness of how to integrate theory with practice and how to learn effectively and efficiently from experience. Reflective practice involves doctors explicitly understanding how they work in order to make accurate diagnoses and provide care to both individuals and populations.

The ability to reflect involves purposeful goal-oriented thinking, which takes into account influencing factors such as the complex, uncertain and sometimes ambiguous contexts in which healthcare is delivered.

Reflective thinking is a dynamic process which influences the development of clinician expertise.

Part of your role as a clinician is to support colleagues through your role as an educator in teaching, appraisal, mentorship and assessment. Promoting the practice of reflective thinking is integral to this role and there are several tools which can help develop this practice.

Developing reflective practices will enhance your fitness to practice both as a clinician and as an educator as it gives you greater insight to your day to day interactions with patients and colleagues and students.

This course will provide you with an introduction to reflection, why it is useful to your role as a clinician and educator and how it fulfils the curriculum requirements for core module 2 on Teaching, Appraisal and Assessment.