A Guide to Nursing Students' Written Reflections for Students and Educators

Experiences from the clinical setting are ideal for building critical thinking skills if reflection is used as a teaching tool. Reflecting on clinical experiences develops critical thinking ability, fosters self-understanding, facilitates coping, and leads to improvement in clinical practice (Craft, 2005; Kennison, 2006). Reflective writing as a pedagogical strategy allows students to integrate their thoughts and experiences with didactic material to more adequately understand both the experiences and the didactic material (McGuire, Lay, & Peters, 2009). Reflective writing is defined as an assignment that is focused on an activity that students have experienced, such as class readings, clinical rotations, or group activities, that highlights what the student learned from the activity (McGuire et al., 2009). Reflection is the purposeful and recursive contemplation of thoughts, feelings, and happenings that pertain to significant practice experiences (Judd, 2013). Reflective journaling helps students progressively develop their critical thinking, self-reflection skills, and cultural humility (Schuessler, Wilder, & Byrd, 2012). This study will explore reflective writing from the perspective of the nursing student and the nurse educator. 

Purpose: The following questions will be answered: What are the benefits of reflective writing for the nursing student and the nurse educator? Why is reflective writing critical in nursing education? How can reflective writing develop critical thinking skills of nursing students? Why would nurse educators want to use reflective writing in their nursing courses, both clinical and didactic? What are the barriers to using reflective writing for students and educators? What is the role of the nurse educator in student reflection? What are the essential components of reflective writing assignments? What model best guides reflective writing assignments?

Methods: A literature review was performed exploring reflective writing, and reflective writing assignments were implemented in a previous research study.

Results: A model has been identified to guide reflective writing assignments: Richard Paul's Model of Critical Thinking. 

Conclusion: Many benefits of reflective writing have been identified, and reflective writing can develop nursing students' critical thinking skills. Richard Paul's model's concepts can be implemented to guide nursing students' written reflections.