Nursing clinical reflection essay: How to write, guide types and examples

Nursing clinical reflection essay: How to write, guide types and examples

When you start writing a thoughtful paper, it may seem like self-reflection is a given. But it is harder than it looks to dig into your own thoughts and experiences. This is the right piece for you if you can not figure out how to understand a nursing clinical reflective essay. How to write a nursing clinical reflection essay, with tips, samples, and types:

This piece will give you enough suggestions to help you write a great nursing student reflection. You will get ideas for what to include, what to leave out, and how to put those ideas into your thought. Find out what a nurse clinical reflective essay is before you go any further.

What is an essay about nursing?

A nursing clinical reflection essay is a piece of writing about how you feel, what you have done, and what you think about something. For nursing students, reflective writings are a good way to practice their skills and learn more. Most people agree that thoughtful clinical practice is an important part of a health care worker’s job.

Clinical reflection is now seen as an important skill that every health care worker should use regularly. This is because there are always more demands for service growth and self-improvement. Physiotherapy has used reflection to improve care for patients, clinical supervision, teamwork, and clinical logic.

When done right, reflective practice in nursing can help you get better at your job as a clinical worker. A nursing practical reflective essay can help people who want to work in health care show what they know about the field in writing.

How to begin the path of nursing clinical reflection?

Reflection is important in a nursing clinical reflection essay because it makes sure that your clinical practice is successful and that you continue to grow as a professional. In nursing, critical thought needs help from a professional.

As a professional health care student, it is less likely that you will be told to keep a record of your daily clinical placements as a way to start your reflective journey. In the journal, you answer questions that make you think. These questions guide and help you analyze.

Such questions include:

What went wrong?
Why did you choose that way?
How did things go well?
Is there study that backs up what you think?
What should have happened instead?
Which steps could work well to do later?

It is better to start your thoughts on paper because that helps you remember the different steps. Once you learn how to do it as a healthcare expert, you can think about an important activity or event and write about it all day long.
How do you get ready to write a reflection essay on a nursing clinical?

Before you start writing a nursing practice experience essay, you have to do some work to get ready. Writing a nursing clinical reflection essay is a long process that requires you to pay full attention to one subject.

That is why it is important to get into “study mode” and concentrate only on the writing process. Without a doubt, the amount of work you have to do will be too much for you to handle. Do not let worry take over. To write a great reflection essay on clinical nursing, just follow these steps.

Take away distractions

That is the end of the story. Surprisingly, most big problems come up at this time. Now, all you have to do is figure out how to solve them.

Put away all of your gadgets, including your cell phone.
Get rid of anything in your environment that can draw your attention away from your work.
If you have to, buy earplugs.

Then switch to a “learning mode.”

As part of your pre-game routine, you should go to the bathroom, eat, drink, relax, and so on.
Get all the fun out of the way first. Set aside enough time so that you will not be tempted.
Open your notepad or make a Word file. This is one of the most important things to do. Make sure you have all of the notes and tools you need.

Research

After you have made sure you are in the right place, the next important step is to start writing. Research is a key part of any educational work, even if you are telling your own story. Here is where you would start looking for ideas:

Online papers from medical journals
Your college library
Your tools for the class.

No matter what you write about, keep in mind that most nursing essays have the same structure. You should remember that your story needs to be unique. Use the following questions as a framework for your article on clinical intuition in nursing. After that, fill it with your own information. If you got most of the questions below right, you are halfway to getting an excellent grade.

What is the exact problem?
Where does this problem come from?
Why should we worry about this?
What is the right thing to do?
What good does your writing do for people?

Make a plan and a rough draft.

Planning is an important part of the review of clinical practice nursing essay, which is not a surprise. It helps you get your ideas to run in a logical way and set up your arguments in the right way. You can also easily change a well-built structure if something does not look right.

It is always better to change a small part of your plan than to rewrite the whole paragraph. Here’s an example of a structure for a nursing practice reflective essay:

Introduction
Hook
Thesis

Main Body

1st point (proof, examples, and other facts to back it up)
2nd Point (proof, examples, and other facts to back it up)
Third point (proof, proof, examples, and other facts to back up your claim)

Conclusion

Your thesis statement is what you say again in your closing.

Last but not least, a great saying

After you make a plan for your nursing clinical reflection essay, it is a good idea to write a rough draft. This step will help you find and fix any mistakes before you hand in the writing. You now know how to get ready to write a practical reflective essay in nursing. But do you know what the parts of the essay are? Here are some of the things you should think about:

Parts of a practical reflection essay in nursing

Introduction

In the beginning of your nurse narrative essay about clinical reflection, you should explain what the essay is about and what the situation is. A very important part of the introduction paragraph is the topic line. Usually, it is the last line of the first part. Your thesis should be short and easy to understand, and it should make your point of view clear.
The example of the situation

Because a reflective essay is based on past events, describing those events is the main point of the piece. You should put the most important and useful information here.
Talking about how you feel:

This part talks about how you respond to things and how you can learn to control your emotions.

Experience review

This part is a summary of the things you learned and skills you picked up on the job.

Chances for reflection and learning

The last part connects to this one. Before, you just told what happened, but now you will talk about what you learned from it. Also, describe your self-development future plan.

Conclusion

The last part, the end, is easy. Just summarize what you talked about in your whole writing.
How to use thought in clinical essays in nursing

There are many examples of clinical reflection, such as scales and surveys for reflective practice. Each type of thought is just as important as the other because it includes:

A record that helps you.
A reminder
written in good faith
Fascinating to finish
needs deep, critical, and objective thought

Schon suggests two ways to reflect: reflection-in-action and reflection-by-action. When you reflect in action, you think about what you are doing while you are doing it. When you think about what you did, you are judging how well you did it. You can learn from the facts you gather. Read on to learn more about how to describe very reflection:
Reflection-in-action

involves thinking about an event that is happening while training.
Done by trained professionals
“Research on the spot” means that while a practitioner learns more about a situation, the situation changes.
It needs “careful attention to the task at hand.”
The person doing the work is his or her own boss. They think about how they act (meta reflection).

Action and reflection

Novices are in charge of putting it into action.
It means thinking about your “prejudices, expectations, and beliefs” after the event.
When you think about what happened, you change what you did and what caused what happened the next time.
Reflecting on what you did in clinical practice turns your skills into knowledge.

Structures for putting together a nursing practical essay on reflection

Reflection is a personal part of a nurse clinical reflection essay, just like your choice of a framework. This helps you get the most out of the structure you choose for reflection. Here are the different structures:
Gibb’s cycle of thought in a nursing clinical essay from 1988

This model shows how to learn from your own events. As a nurse, the Gibb’s model of thought will help you think more critically. You can also think more deeply about clinical cases and the causes of bad things that happen when you use the model. There are six stages that help you write down information:

Description
Feelings
Taking stock of what happened
Analysis
Conclusion
Plan of action

Description:

Here, you talk about the thing you are thinking about. A description gives short, clear background information about what happened.
Feelings

Focuses on how the person feels and what they think during and after the event.

Evaluation

Requires you to think about the experience you just had by answering the questions below:

How did you feel about what happened?
What did you think after that?
How did other people feel about it?
If it was a case of fixing a problem, was the problem solved?

If there is proof of the event you are thinking about, you can include it here.
Analysis

In this part, you should show how you have thought about the event.

Choose the things you think make your experience worse or better.
Choose what you think went well and what you think went wrong.
Link what you did to what the literature says.

Conclusion

In your conclusion, you should summarize the effects of what happened.

You could do the same, right?
What do you need to change?
What steps would you take to stop things like this from happening again?
How would you make sure the same thing happens again to make sure the same good thing happens?

Plan of action

Plan your next step with an action plan. It shows how you should make the changes you have identified to get the result you want next to me, whether that is better performance or standard maintenance.
John’s model of clinical reflection structure (2000)

This model is set up in a way that has questions that can be asked to help lead the process. Some people do not like how limited this model is. John’s model has 5 types of questions, which are:

Description
Reflection
Factors that matter
Evaluation
Learning

1. Description

Phenomenon: Describe what is happening right now.
What needed to happen for the experience to happen?
What important things in the past led up to the experience?
What are the most important ways to think about the experience?

2. Reflection

What was I trying to do?
Why did I step in when I tried to help?
What were the results of what I did for: Me? The sick or the family? The people I work with?
What did I think and feel about this while it was happening?

How did the person who was sick feel about it?

3. Factors that matter

What about myself led me to make my choice?
What outside factors led me to make the choice I did?
Which source of information did or should have led me to make the choice I did?

4. Evaluation

Where did I stand?
What happened because of the choices?
How has the experience changed the way I know things? (From an empirical, aesthetic, or personal point of view?

Driscoll’s and Burton’s framework of growth (1970)

Borton’s 3 queries: What? Then what? Now let us look at what led to John Driscoll’s hands-on learning. With the 3 questions, there was a simple framework for thought. The Driscoll’s framework is a popular option that most experts in health care use and that expert bodies support. Here are some examples of how Borton’s questions can be used in a nursing essay on the review of clinical practice:
What?

What is that?”What happened?” questions make the person think more about what has happened.

Which steps did the people involved take?
What part did I have?
What went wrong?
What move did I make?
What problems did they list?

Then what?

This question looks at the thought.

What lesson did you acquire?
What did it matter?
What kind of answers did you find?

What is next?

The part focuses on what you should do next and how your learning experiences can help you in the future.

What do you need to do right now?
What will happen because of it?
How would you fix the problem or make the situation better?
How will what you have learned from this change the way you do things in the future?

You have learned about three of the most important clinical practice learning models and reflective structures. Remember that thinking about yourself is a skill that takes a lot of work. It is important to think about different frameworks and structures for different situations when picking a framework to use, based on what works best for you and the situation.

Daily reflections (such as CPD events) may be best suited to Borton’s method, but a scholarly job or an important event at work would be better suited to Gibbs’s more complete framework.

To make a case that is based on evidence, you should also look into related literature, think about your own experiences, and look into anecdotal evidence. You should include all of these things in your clinical reflections. This helps you build a reflective practice that is based on study.

Nursing clinical reflection essay for a project

As a nursing student, your final practice experience essay should be more than just a list of things that happened. It also does not mean you should just dump everything you are thinking and feeling. In reflective writing, you need to use facts or cases to show what you are thinking and also take an analytical approach.

You are trying to walk a fine line between your own point of view and what good academic practices and critical thinking require. This means making a case or line of thought. The following are some more helpful tips:

showing that you are knowledgeable, that you have read the available literature and thought about how it affects your own progress.
Getting across the point that you know things are not always simple and easy.
How to write well about the relationship between your practice/experiences and what you have read.

Questions that people often have about a nursing practice reflective essay

If you have to write a nursing clinical reflection essay, you might feel like you have too many questions to answer. The following are some of the questions:
Why do you have to write a reflection essay on a nursing clinical?

In a nursing clinical reflective essay, you talk about how you felt about a past event and how it changed you and what you learned from it.

It is often written about in a journal post, which shows how the author’s views have changed over time.
What are the qualities of a good reflective essay on practical nursing?

In a reflective essay, there should be a mix of what is factual and what is personal. We look at both academic studies and our own lives. This type of paper should show your readers how events can change how they act and what skills they have picked up from those experiences.
Why do you have to write a reflection essay on a nursing clinical?

In a nursing clinical reflective essay, you talk about how you felt about a past event and how it changed you and what you learned from it. It is often written about in a journal post, which shows how the author’s views have changed over time.
What should a good clinical nurse reflective essay have?

In a reflective essay, there should be a mix of what is factual and what is personal. We look at both academic studies and our own lives. This type of paper should show your readers how their events can change how they act and what skills you gained from them.

What are the three most important parts of a clinical reflection essay in nursing?

An essay needs to be well-organized and broken up into three parts. It should have a clear introduction that explains the problem, a middle part that looks at what caused the problem, and a conclusion that talks about possible solutions and how the problem affected the author.
Which plan works best for a nursing clinical reflective essay?

The Gibbs structure is one of the options that nurses can use. The style is simple and easy to figure out. So, you can use it in any situation without much trouble.
Things not to do in a practical reflective essay in nursing

It can be difficult to get into a nursing school. Even if you have great grades and a good GPA, it is hard to get into nursing school. So, your writing needs to be the best it can be! One of the best ways to make sure your paper is perfect is to learn the most common mistakes and avoid making them. Here is a list of the most common mistakes that people make in their nursing application essays.

Not talking about your own experience as a nurse.

Without a story from real life, a nursing application essay seems very weak. It is not enough to just list the things a nurse should be like as a person.

Plagiarizing

If you copy or plagiarize in your reflection of clinical practice nursing essay, you could get a bad score or be turned down by the colleges where you are applying. Plagiarism is, at the very least, wrong. Make sure you give credit to all of your sources and tell a true, original story to avoid any problems.

Always saying the same thing

This is a regular problem with the first and last paragraphs. If you need to connect the first and last paragraphs, you should not repeat the information from the first paragraph in the last paragraph. Instead, pull your ideas together and finish your article in a lively way.

Not giving enough evidence to back up what you say

It is silly to keep telling students this, but some students still can not explain why they have to go to a certain school. If you are writing an essay for a nursing school, make sure you do not do this.

More tips for writing a clinical nursing reflective essay

Now is the time for you to start writing your nursing practice reflective essay. But hold on, there are a few more things you should look at.

Start your student nurse essay by going over the job instructions. This is the best way to figure out what will count in your writing.
Do not be afraid to ask your professors for help and information. Even if you do not believe it, they do not want you to do poorly on your student nurse projects and essays.
To write a good nursing student essay, you will need to find and read a lot about nursing. Keep in mind that it often takes a long time. So, you should start studying as soon as you can.
There is a standard format for nursing clinical reflective writings. Make sure you have all of the necessary parts. Remember that there are specific terms that you need to use in your work. Follow the right style for your paper, such as MLA, APA, or Chicago.
How can I sum up an article without copying and pasting? Balance your words. Pay close attention to more than just how your story makes sense as you read through your paper. You should also check the length of your paper and how much of it is your own thoughts and how much is a review of someone else’s work.

Parts of a college admissions essay

You know that nursing school is one of the most competitive places to go to college, especially compared to other schools. If you want your paper to be accepted, it must be very good. Read on to see a list of the most important parts of any essay for getting into nursing school.

These parts have all the important information about a candidate that an admissions officer needs to know.

Give a reason why.

To start, you should talk about how you got the idea to become a nurse. Is there anyone who made you think about this? Was there a special event that made you decide on your career? Do you ever wonder what kind of nursing you would like to do?

These are important questions to answer in your writing for nursing school. You are doing double service by answering these questions. Not only will you explain why you want to be a nurse, but you will also have to prove that your goals are honest.

Show what you are worth.

You must provide information about your nursing experience. Nursing is a job that usually needs at least a little bit of experience. No one will believe your nursing practical reflective essay if you have never seen a syringe in your life. Write a message about yourself.

Make it strong, too.

Show that you are prepared.

You have to show that you are ready to be a nurse and that you can handle any problems that may come up. Being a nurse is both emotionally and physically draining. Because of this, you must show that you have the highest personal and business standards. Show the hiring counselors that you have what it takes to be a nurse.

In conclusion

You now know how to write a nursing clinical reflecting essay because you have read these tips. Now is the time to write down information that will make your essay stand out and increase your chances of getting into a nursing school. Go ahead and take the chance by carefully reading the tips above.

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