ORCID

Abstract

Promoting reflection on experience and developing students’ reflectiveskills is an important element of curricula across the health professions.Students often do not find reflection easy and educators usea range of approaches to facilitate this. This qualitative study analysedfinal year medical students’ written reflections about important anddifficult concepts they had encountered at medical school and personalchange. As part of this, students were expected to look back ontheir written reflections from earlier years of the undergraduate programme.An initial analysis identified ‘learning from past reflections’ asan important theme. Here we report an in-depth analysis of this theme.Thirty-six final year volunteer students’ reflections were analysed and 6themes identified where students explicitly referred to earlier writtenreflections. These were: managing emotions; holistic, patient-centredcare; uncertainty and ambiguity; self-regulation; growth in identity andsense of self efficacy; and reflective practice changes. Asking studentsto reflect on past reflections appeared to help students identify personalchange, and how their understanding of ‘important concepts’ andtheir views and approach to reflective practice have developed.Experienced by students as a motivating, profound, sometimes catharticprocess, this activity could be a useful addition to reflectivewriting training in health professions.

DOI

10.1080/14623943.2024.2406969

Publication Date

2024-10-01

Publication Title

Reflective Practice: International and Multidisciplinary Perspectives

Keywords

Reflective practice, medical education, reflective writing, university students, value of reflection

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