If you reflect on the things you did right, on your successes, that allows you to celebrate every little success. It allows you to realize how much you’ve done right, the good things you’ve done in your life. Without reflection, it’s too easy to forget these things, and focus instead on our failures.

How to form the daily reflection habit

1. Choose one practice method. Choose one method from the few mentioned below.
2. Keep it simple.
3. Set reminders.
4. Anchor reflection to an existing action, or routine.
5. Keep going, pick again, and again.
6. Review your progress (i.e. reflect on reflection).
7. Fine-tune your process.

The core elements of academic reflective writing

1. develop a perspective or line of reasoning.
2. develop a link between your experience or practice and existing knowledge (theoretical or personal)
3. show understanding and appreciation of different perspectives to your own.

Top tips for writing a Reflective Account

1. What happened? What did you observe?
2. What was your role?
3. What issue is being addressed or population is being served?
4. What were your initial expectations?
5. What are you most proud of?
6. Did you learn a new skill or clarify an interest?
7. How can you apply this learning?
8. Did you hear or feel anything that surprised you?

In practical terms, a reflective account should be a brief, written description of an experience and your actions, including what went well and what did not go well, and what you have learnt for the future.

Aim to write around 800 words in total, focusing on what you learned from the CPD article and how you changed or improved your practice as a result. An example of a reflective account completed using the NMC form can be found here.

Using reflection within health and social care has benefits for patients and the profession. In order to do this effectively, reflection involves describing, analysing and evaluating experiences from practice in a way that helps you make sense of it.

Reflective teaching means looking at what you do in the classroom, thinking about why you do it, and thinking about if it works – a process of self-observation and self-evaluation.

Reflective practice is ‘learning through and from experience towards gaining new insights of self and practice’ (Finlay, 2008). Reflection is a systematic reviewing process for all teachers which allows you to make links from one experience to the next, making sure your students make maximum progress.