Exploring the Impact of Self-Reflection on Professionalism in Health and Social Care

Task 1: Reflective Essay and Personal Development Plan:

In modern health and social care context, reflection is crucial for all the health and social carte professional as well as staffs to promote their continuous professional and personal development. As defined by Shinners and Graebe (2020), in healthcare context, self-reflection is the process on evaluating and analysing past activities, performances, behaviour and approaches that enable the health and social care staffs to identity their professional strengths, weakness and areas of improvements. Some of the research studies have mentioned that, reflection in health and social care can be considered as the process that enables the health and social care personnel to undergo a continuous professional development (CPD) that assists them to shape the existing personal and professional skill and develop the innovative and new skill thereby improving the professional standard.

There are manifold purpose and roles of reflection in health and social care that are strongly associated with improving skills, professional knowledge and expertise of health and social care personnel (Kyrkjebø et al. 2017). The major roles of reflection in health and social care it to allow healthcare professionals to analyse their past experiences thereby assisting them to learn from these experiences. As mentioned by Richter and Idleman (2017), assist health and social care professional to be involved in-depth analysis on their failure, weakness, and areas of improvement. The purpose of reflection is to enable the health and social care staffs to improve the right decision making, analysing ad judgmental skill thereby assisting to make in-depth evaluation of their performance and activity to identify the errors or flaunts in their way of working. Reflection in health and social care plays major role in assisting health and social care staffs to identify the scope for improvement in the work process thereby implementing effective modifications in these areas to improve thte overall care delivery process.

During my practice as an assistant practitioner in a multidisciplinary team self-reflection assist me to reflect on my past experiences that I gathered during this practice. Kyrkjebø et al. (2017), mentioned in this context that the major roles of reflection health and social care to assist the health care professionals and social care staffs to think deeply as well as holistically on different healthcare issues thereby obtaining a greater insight as well as learning on how to overcome these issues. Through reflecting on my past experiences, performances, activities and approaches during my practice I am able to collect a rational decision making to experimental and most effects learning process that assist me to develop an evidence-based approach thereby improving the overall clinical intervention. Alternatively () argued that, reflection has the major purpose of assisting healthcare professionals to analyse the implication on the past and future activities in the healthcare thereby developing effective strategies to deal with all the implication to improves the overall care delivery process. On the other hand Kroll and Dussias (2017) mentioned in their research paper that the major role of reflection in health and social care context is to improve the risk assessment and crisis management ability through which the health and social care staffs can analyse the past failure and drawbacks thereby developed effective safeguarding against taking any impulsive decision. Self-reflection is highly effective in my cases that assists me to improve my competence level and professional standard as an assistant practitioner by rectifying and working on my flaws and weaknesses. As an assistant practitioner I believe in conduiting self-reflection on regular basis that can help me to develop in-depth and clear understanding on different healthcare issues and aspects thereby developed effective decision or strategies to deal with all the issues (Mantzourani et al. 2021). Self-reflection assists me look back on my practice and assist me to fund out the events and situation that I experiences, what right and wrong preferences I had done and which new skills and professional knowledge I had gathered as well as learned from all these experiences. Also the self-reflection assist me analysing what strategies needed to be implemented or what actions should be taken in the past event to deal with the situation, thereby preparing me to develop proper skills for dealing with different work situations that can occur in the near future.

Different tools and methods are used by the health and social care professionals while reflecting on their practice. Rolfe’s reflective cycle is one of the widely preferred and used mode in health and social care that I often use to reflect on my own practices and exegeses that I gathered during the practice (Hildebrand, 2018). The benefits of tis reflective cycle are that this model is highly effectives in assisting me as well as health and social care staffs to make an in-depth analysis of the past experience during the practices and a clear evaluation on what have been learned throughput these practices. The limitations of this model is that this model fails to assist me to consider that the associated factors that that have potential influences on the performance and activities in my past experiences such as the work environment, the therapeutic relationship with patients, the collaboration with my colleagues in the multidisciplinary team etc. Another important reflective tool is Gibbs Reflective cycle this is widely used in the health and social care for conducting self-reflection (Howard and Eddy‐Imishue, 2020). Through using the Gibb’s reflection model, I am able to reflect on the past event, the activities in this event, the performance and approach used in this event, the skill and knowledge I have learned during the past evet and the action plan that I needs to do for maintaining a continuous professional development. However, this model fails to assist the health and social care professionals how to implement the concept, perception ad knowledge they learned by reflecting on their past experiences into the current and future practise.

Practice theme is important in health and social care is important in underpinning the effective reflection into the learning and practice. NMC (2019) mentioned that practice themes act as the important performance indicators that assist health and social care professional to shape the existing skill and develop new professional knowledge thereby improving their competence level (NMC, 2019). I have implemented different important practice themes into my reflection that assisted me to work on all my areas of improvement thereby assisting me to develop strong professional and personal skill. The first practice themes that I have implemented into my reflection is the complying with the law, ethical practices and regulations in the health and social care context (Christie et al. 2018.). Under this practice theme I have set the objectives to improve my understanding regarding health and social care regulations and their implementation in my practice that will assist me to better implement and follow all these regulations thereby promoting my professionalism in every aspect of the healthcare context. Another practice theme that I set to implement into this reflection is to improvise my professional values, behaviour and attitude in the healthcare through using the evidence-based practices under these practice themes I work on improve my professional behaviour, activities a and attitudes towards my colleagues and patients that enable me to improve my professional accountability and integrity.

Task 2: Portfolio of Learning and Development (PLAD) and Critical Reflection

Critical reflection on learning from the past experiences is crucial in health and social care that assists the health and social care professionals to develop and implement the effectives and appropriate measures to fill all the gaps in the professional knowledge and skill that are identified throughout the reflection. On conducing the critical evaluation of the learning experiences that I obtained during my practices as an assistant practitioner, I have used appropriate practice themes and effective quality performance measures. Through developing and implementing these practice themes and quality performance measures I am not only improve my competence level by sharing my existing skill, professional knowledges and expertise but also, I have worked on all the areas of improved thereby developing new skill that assisted me to have high level of professional expertise.

the first practice theme that I have followed and implemented into my practice is maintain a strong compliance with all the legislations, ethics and regulatory standard of health and social care context (Christie et al. 2018.). Under these practices themes I have emphasized on improving my knowledge on my duties of care and roles as an assistant practitioner. As mentioned by Charissi (2020), during the implementation of practise themes, health and social care professionals must ensure that they follow the valid and authentic pathways in implementing the practice themes into their practices to promote the professionalism and accountability towards their profession. Through implementing this practice theme into my practice, I have gathered the clear understanding about the legal standards and codes set under NMC (2015), NICE guideline and Health and Social Care Act (2015). As argued by Gorbunova and Sabirova (2017) while critically reflecting on own practice in relation to comply with all the health and social care legislation, healthcare professionals must emphasize on identifying the areas of weakness and gap which makes them failed in past practices to comply with all the legal standard thereby affecting their professional integrity (Christie et al. 2018). NMC (2019) mentioned that while conducting self-reflection, student nurses or assistant practitioners must reflect on the ability and performances in providing the high quality and safe care to patients by following all the health and social care guidelines (NMC, 2019). Under the practices themes I am able to learn the ethical and; legal guidelines that assistant practitioners need to follow while going to arrange transparent information delivery in the emergency ward, provide compassionate care to patients, meet patient’s personalised needs and conduct effective risk management.

The other practice themes that I have developed and implemented into my practices to improves my skill and knowledge that I gathered throughout the refection improving positive health, safety and safeguarding of the patients as well as of all the health and social care staffs (Knight and Newby, 2019). While implementing this practice themes into my practice I am able to learn how to comply with the NMC (2015) codes, ‘preserving safety’ to promote the patients’ safety throughout the care delivery. NMC (2015) mentioned that each student nurses and assistant practitioners must learn how to comply with the code ‘preserving safety’ to ensure that all the treatment process and clinical intervention that are used in patients’ care are highly relevant and safety top promote high level of patient’s safety and positive health and wellbeing. On the other hand, Tepavicharova and Dikova (2019), argued that, while it comes to safeguarding and safety of the patients as well as healthcare staffs, health and social care professional must focus on identifying the safety needs of the vulnerable people such as people with speech and communication difficulties, bipolar diseases and dementia. Through implementing this practice themes into my professional practice, I am able to learn how to work under the own level of competence and professional standard to ensure the safety of the patients and other service providers.

Another practice themes I have implemented into my professional practice is respecting, promoting and valuing difference, diversity and inclusion in the workplace. Under this practise themes I have learned how to treat all a people in my workplace including the services users and the health and social care staffs with proper respect and dignity irrespective of the diverse vast, religion, background and race (Howard and Eddy‐Imishue, 2020). Additionally, this practise themes also assists me to respect the diverse culture, skill, professional knowledges and ability of different health and social acre staffs in my workplace thereby encouraging them to be involved in the shard decision making. As argued by Kyrkjebø et al. (2017), although incorporating the diverse skills and professional knowledge in healthcare is important in developing the innovative healthcare strategies, sometimes high level of differences in the work process, thought and decision of healthcare professionals lead to development of severe conflict, unhealthy competition and disagreement. In this context, I think I need to focus more on developing conflict management skill while working in different healthcare team that will assist me to work collaboratively with all the team members thereby meeting the common healthcare goals. Through implementing this proactive theme into my professional practise, I have learned how to adapt to different healthcare team with different values, principles and work process thereby improving my resilience in working in diverse health care environment (Knight and Newby, 2019).

Anther practice theme that I have implemented into my practice is promoting positive mental and physical wellbeing in health and social care context. In this context I have worked in developing my skill and professional abilities in understanding the guidelines under the Mental Capacity Act [MCA]. Through gathering the in-depth understanding on effective implementation of this act, I am able to learn how to incorporates the guidelines of the MCA to determine and meet the mental health needs of service users (Hildebrand, 2018). Under this practice thee I have also leaned about using the empathetic and effective communication with services user with mental disability in terms of providing them with proper mental and emotional support, I also learned how to provide fair and relevant treatment to vulnerable patients with disability thereby protecting them from any kind of abuse, discrimination and harassment.

Another practice themes that I have developed through reflecting on my practices is using evidence-based practices and applied mathematics into the work process. As mentioned by Hildebrand (2018), on modern health and social care field, professionals need to implement base practices and mathematical framework into every aspect of this health and social care to optimise the work process of healthcare organisations. PHE (2019) acknowledged that, the use of IT technologies, software, hardware, healthcare application program and innovative healthcare operating system are proved to be highly effective for all the health and social care professionals to improve the way deal with different healthcare task. Under this theme, I have learned how to use defence modernised healthcare technologies in terms of providing the fast and high-quality care to patients I also have learned how to use the IT technologies in the task delegation, schedule formation and preparation of case study and HER (electronic health record) of patients which would help me to improve my future work practice.

Along with this practice themes, I have also used effective quality improves practice such as self-monitoring, using self-evaluation check list, goal setting and implementing these goals, audio and video recording, mentoring, self-review and gathering feedback from different stakeholders. As stated by Richter and Idleman (2017), goals setting and self-monitoring are effective quality performance measures that are widely used by health and social care professional in terms of setting the long term and shirt term objectives and then monitoring that the strategies that r taken to meet these objectives are relevant or not. The major objective that I have set is improving my analysing and judgemental skill, verbal communication skill, times management skill, task prioritisation skill and skill of conducting the loop communication. Through conducting the effective self-monitoring process, I would be able to evaluate the usefulness of all these objectives in improving my professional standard the competence level.

Self-evaluation check list is highly effective quality performance measure that will enable me to set a plan or portfolio for meeting all the criteria of the check list. This check list would assist me to follow the appropriate process and use the relevant tools in meeting all the criteria of the check list thereby improving my professional and personal skill. As argued by Richter and Idleman (2017), although the self-evaluation check list is useful in performing effective self-assessment in healthcare, in most of the times the objectives behind this check list is not met due to lack of support, and assistance from their seniors and mentors and lack of proper learning and development infrastructure.

Audio and video recording is one of the most effective quality improvement measures in the healthcare that will assist me evaluate my activities, performances and behaviour during my practices thereby determining the areas of improvement (Kyrkjebø et al. 2017). Through using this measure, I would be able to identify what are the knowledges and skill gaps in me that need to be rectified and overcome.

On the other hand, feedback from the different stakeholders in workplaces such as the patients, my colleagues, senior nursing profession and the health care staffs would be highly informative for me to tract my improvement and professional development. Based on the feedback feedback I can understand what my weaknesses and imitations are thereby setting relevant strategies in transforming all these weakness into strength and improve my professional and personal skill

Looking for further insights on Exploring the Impact of Long-Term Conditions on Patient Care? Click here.

Reference list:

Charissi, A., 2020. The educational autobiography as a critical reflection tool towards personal and professional development of pre-service early years practitioners. European Journal of Education Studies.

Christie, H., Cree, V.E., Mullins, E. and Tett, L., 2018. ‘University opened up so many doors for me’: the personal and professional development of graduates from non-traditional backgrounds. Studies in Higher Education, 43(11), pp.1938-1948.

Gorbunova, N.V. and Sabirova, E.G., 2017. Pedagogical design of future teachers' personal and professional route. Man in India, 97(14), p.217.

Hildebrand, J., 2018. Bridging the gap: A training module in personal and professional development. Routledge.

Howard, V. and Eddy‐Imishue, G.E.K., 2020. Factors influencing adequate and effective clinical supervision for inpatient mental health nurses' personal and professional development: An integrative review. Journal of psychiatric and mental health nursing, 27(5), pp.640-656.

Knight, S.A. and Newby, W.G., 2019. The impact of professional development groups on student counsellors’ personal and professional development. Western Undergraduate Psychology Journal, 7(1).

Kroll, J.F. and Dussias, P.E., 2017. The benefits of multilingualism to the personal and professional development of residents of the US. Foreign Language Annals, 50(2), pp.248-259.

Kyrkjebø, D., Søvde, B.E. and Råholm, M.B., 2017. Nursing competence in the municipal health service: can professional development be accommodated?. Norwegian Journal of Clinical Nursing/Sykepleien Forskning.

Mantzourani, E., Chang, H., Desselle, S., Canedo, J. and Fleming, G., 2021. Reflections of mentors and mentees on a national mentoring programme for pharmacists: An examination into relationships, personal and professional development. Research in Social and Administrative Pharmacy.

Richter, S. and Idleman, L., 2017. Online teaching efficacy: A product of professional development and ongoing support. International journal of nursing education scholarship, 1(open-issue).

Shinners, J. and Graebe, J., 2020. Continuing education as a core component of nursing professional development. The Journal of Continuing Education in Nursing, 51(1), pp.6-8.

Soler, O.M., Aguayo-González, M., Gutiérrez, S.S.R., Pera, M.J. and Leyva-Moral, J.M., 2021. Nursing students' expectations of their first clinical placement: A qualitative study. Nurse Education Today, 98, p.104736.

Tepavicharova, M. and Dikova, L., 2019. Social media–on the edge between personal and professional development. Economics. Ecology. Socium, 3(3), pp.21-26.

Appendix1: PLAD Document

Placement Meeting: The Learning Agreement meeting

A placement learning agreement meeting will be held when you commence engaging in practice - based assessment within your work environment and with the person/people who will be responsible for signing your PLAD. The purpose of this meeting is to agree all aspects of the placement and to formalise these in an agreement. This meeting is led by the person from the College who is responsible for employer engagement. This will involve, a three-way meeting with the learner, supervisor (at work) and the Employer Engagement Officer.

The learning agreement allows all parties to clarify their expectations and roles. It is essential that attention is paid to the completion of this form, which ensures that everyone has contact details and agreed arrangements for the remainder of the placement.