Reflective practice and its implications for pharmacy education

Abstract

Pharmacy students require critical-thinking and problem-solving skills to integrate theory learned in the classroom with the complexities of practice, yet many pharmacy students fall short of acquiring these skills.(1-2) Reflective practice activities encourage learning from the student's own experiences and those of others, and offer a possible solution for the integration of knowledge-based curricula with the ambiguities of practice, as well as enhance communication and collaboration within a multidisciplinary team. Although reflective practices have been embraced elsewhere in health professions education, their strengths and shortcomings need to be considered when implementing such practices into pharmacy curricula. This review provides an overview of the evolution of theories related to reflective practice, critically examines the use of reflective tools (such as portfolios and blogs), and discusses the implications of implementing reflective practices in pharmacy education.

Keywords: pharmacy education; reflection; reflective learning; reflective practice; self-directed learning.

Figure 1.

Timeline of the key educators in the development of reflective practice.

Figure 2.

Reflective Concepts framework: acquire, learn, integrate, new perspectives.

Figure 3.

Possible implementation of a framework of reflective practice in pharmacy.