The reflective practitioner in nursing

Abstract

This work is a study of eight practising registered nurses and their use of reflection-in-action in their everyday work. Schon's work on reflection-in-action forms the theoretical basis, and the research tool uses the work of Mezirow and Lazzara's use of Colaizzi's reduction. The findings are that, of the sample used, reflection-in-action is present extensively in the form of description and of planning of actions, but to a much lesser extent in the area of recognition of value judgements and the areas of reflection-in-action leading to learning taking place. Where these were present, albeit in small quantities, they were almost exclusively confined to the community nurses and the nurse practitioner. The tool also helped determine whether or not practice was founded on the use of nursing research and/or that of other disciplines. In the nurses studied here, this was somewhat erratic. With changes in technology, social and environmental changes, and the advancement of nursing and social science research, it is important for registered nurses to be able to both learn from their everyday work and use knowledge from nursing and other disciplines in this, rather than, as is demonstrated here, separate theory from practice and be relatively unable to learn from their work. In view of the changes presently proposed in nurse education, this work has implications for nurse educators as well as for practising nurses.