Reflective Practice

Being responsible for the quality of your work and maintaining your skill level as well as improving on it is going to need a certain amount of self-evaluation, and this is referred to as reflective practice. Reflective practice is an invaluable tool in identifying areas where you excel as well as highlighting areas where there is room for improvement

What is reflective practice?
Reflective practice is the process of learning from and through experience and gaining insights of self and of practice. This involves examining your assumptions as well as being self-aware and critically evaluating your responses to situations.

Why is reflective practice important?
It allows you to gain new understanding of your reactions and behaviour and to identify areas where you need to improve. It allows you to implement training if necessary as well as an action plan for dealing with similar situations in the future. Critical analysis helps to modify your actions as well as identifying learning needs. It also helps you to identify your strengths and your weaknesses.
How reflective practice improves the quality of service provision
Highlighting strengths and weaknesses allows management to formulate effective training programs. Trained members of staff are more motivated and effective thereby delivering high quality service. Reflective practice is a vital tool in the delivery of client centred.
Using standards as a basis for reflection
Measuring your performance against the required standards gives you a very good starting point for your reflective practice. Becoming aware of the standards expected of you is of vital importance and this information can be found in the NICSS Codes of Practice:
Being responsible for the quality of your work and taking responsibility for your role as a care worker can be summarised as follows:
• You must protect the rights and promote the interests of service users
• Strive to establish and maintain the trust of service users
• Promote the independence of service users while protecting them from danger or harm
• Respect the rights of service users while ensuring their behaviour does not harm themselves or other people
• Uphold public trust in social care services
• maintaining and improving your knowledge and skills
A handy checklist to consider during self-evaluation
1. How did I approach the situation?
2. Was my approach positive?
3. How did my behaviour affect the people I support?
4. How did my behaviour affect my colleagues?
5. Did I give the task my full attention?
6. What were my strengths?
7. What were my weaknesses?
8. Could I have done things differently or more effectively?
9. How can I improve my performance?
10. How can I go about changing the outcome positively?

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Feedback in a structured environment plays an important role in developing an individual as a good care worker. Feedback can help set targets and can motivate and focus an employee. It can stress what is important within an organization, and this identifies areas that need to be prioritised. It identifies strengths and weaknesses and identifies training needs. Positive reinforcement is an excellent tool for confidence building and can form the basis of a good relationship between the examiner and worker. Criticism can be demoralising and make someone feel hopeless and angry, but constructive criticism identifies a problem as well as offering solutions and strategies for dealing with it. This can be a positive experience if it is presented in a way that helps the care worker develop better practice. Some people react badly to criticism, and may not agree with the evaluation; they may lash out or become defensive and should be given an opportunity to explain why they disagree. However, it is possible to present negative feedback in a way that makes it easier to accept, especially if it is coupled with praise for strengths, and if it is presented as an opportunity to improve performance and care practice.