Why reflect?

One of the mandates of self-regulation in Nursing is the need to reflect on an ongoing basis. The process of reflection allows the nurse to look back on a situation encountered in the professional setting. A situation may have resulted with unresolved ethical issues, or have presentedas clinical practices done with unclear guidelines. The individual will then explore and shed light on the issue by consulting practice guidelines, journal entries, and other valid resources. Reflecting is also a part of the Quality Assurance Program (College of Nurses of Ontario) and it is one way for stakeholders to know that a nurse has taken measures to keep herself professionaly responsible - in lay terms "keep herself on top of her game".

It is both advantageous for the nurse to participate in this practice. It opens your eyes to issues and it educates you as well. Although a lot of expectations are being put on the nurses in terms of KNOWING everything, reality is there is no way of knowing everything at one point in a nurses' career. Knowledge is black and white and it is the grey areas that sometimes confounds us all, may you be a nurse or not.

So, in my career as a nurse I have reflected regularly in an informal way. And i realize that I should take note of these learnings in a more concrete way so I will have something to look back on. And who knows when I am going to get called in by CNO (randomly) to see if I have been doing my part in maintaining my reflective practice.

That is why I am starting this blog so that I can keep records of my professional reflections and at the same time share my stories to those are interested. And of course, comments and discussions are always welcome...