Refective Account: Promote Personal Development in Care Settings
Introduction
Reflective practice is an essential aspect of professional development for health and social care workers. It allows us to critically evaluate our knowledge, performance, and understanding against relevant standards and to use feedback to inform our ongoing development. Through reflection, we can identify areas for improvement and work with others to review and prioritise our learning needs, professional interests, and development opportunities.
One model of reflective practice that is commonly used in the healthcare field is Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle. The cycle comprises six stages: description, feelings, evaluation, analysis, conclusion, and action plan. In this reflective account, I will use Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle to reflect on a recent experience in my practice as a health and social care professional and how it has informed my ongoing development.
Description:
I recently worked with a service user with multiple chronic health conditions and struggled to manage them effectively. When I first met the service user, I took the time to understand their situation and the difficulties they had been experiencing. I was struck by their courage and resilience in facing such a challenging situation. I spent the next few months educating and supporting the service user and helping them to develop a plan for managing their conditions.
Despite my best efforts, they still had difficulty managing their symptoms and were not seeing the improvement they had hoped for. I felt frustrated, as I wanted so much to be able to help this service user and felt that I had failed them in some way. I also felt a little discouraged, as I had put much effort into…
Other answers in the full document:
- 2.2 Reflect on practice to improve the quality of the service provided
- 3.1 Evaluate own knowledge, performance and understanding against relevant standards
- 3.2 Use feedback to evaluate own performance and inform development
- 4.2 Work with others to review and prioritise own learning needs, professional interests and development opportunities
- 4.3 Work with others to agree own personal development plan