The Health Profession as One of the Most Fulfilling Professions - Coursework Example

DRAFT PERSONAL REFLECTION Affiliation Health profession is one of the most fulfilling professions today. However, health professionals need to be abreast with the dynamism of health problems affecting people. These problems pose very significant challenges to health professionals in the health practice. Reading books, health journals, borrowing experience from other health professionals are no longer enough indicators for one to succeed in the health profession. Health professional need to do a lot more than just the use their personal experience and knowledge to solving health concerns of the general public. Scholars argue that personal reflection for health professionals is very essential. Studies show that, personal reflection improves performance in health professionals. But the begging question would be; what is personal reflection? Personal reflection in common terms refer a situation where one reflects on what happened during a past experience and what their role was I the experience.This includes your behavior and thinking, and related emotions. Personal reflection will make a health profession have a better judgment of similar situations in future. Proponents of reflective thinking argue that if it used comprehensively and honestly, I will yield better performance for the health professionals. Reflective practice in the health profession requires you to stand back, to consciously analyse your decision making processes, drawing on theory and applying it again in practice’. (CSP, Information paper, 2005). Schon, (2009) looks at reflective practice as a way in which an individual develops a repertoire of knowledge and ability, which can be drawn upon in future situations. Reflective practice can be summarized in a cycle of six major stages; descriptive stage, Feelings stage, Evaluation stage, analysis stage, conclusion stage, and finally the action plan stage (Gibbs, 1988). These numerous stages go on the mind of health professional during a personal reflection moment. Health Professionals reflect both in the moment (reflection-in action) and after the event (reflection-on-action) (Schon, 1983). Both types of reflection inform what the health professional does in any particular situation, and also in situations that are similar in their future practice. Reflective practice among health professionals is gaining ground. It facilitates growth and development in career of a health professional. It also has a great effect on the success outcomes of health practice by a health professional. In recent studies, reflective practice is slowly being viewed as a very critical dimension in the development for a health professional. Continued competence and credentiality of health professionals require reflective practice. Kinsella (2001) argues that action without reflection leads to meaningless activism, while reflection without action means we are not bringing our awareness into the world. Her preference is for a balance of action and reflection. Therefore, personal reflection is very important as a balance between action and reflection. Health professionals should embrace reflective culture in their health practice for improved performance. Many authors recognize the need to consider the contexts in which we practice and to understand that the “good intentions” (Townsend, 1998) of health professionals can be overruled by practice contexts and resource limitations that don’t facilitate or allow optimal practice. Reflecting on these issues can be challenging as decisions need to be made about what one can and cannot tolerate. It may promote professionals to become advocates for their clients or to challenge the systems and practice contexts in which they work. Considering the consequences of challenges is an important part of reflection prior to action. Personal reflection requires routine of events. Health professional should be able to learn and practice these routines. They should make them habitual. Personal reflections can also be based on moments of practice, but they should be done continuously. During reflection process, there are a number of questions that run on the mind of a health professional (Kinsella, 2001). The professional poses questions to themselves and their experience. These questions are; what happened? , why? , What was my role? , What was the role of the client? , What was the role of the context? , What was the role of the system? , What was the outcome? , How was this similar or different to what I expected/ to my past experience/ to my theoretical understanding? , What have I learned and how can I use this learning in the future? These series of questions run repeatedly in the mind of a health profession during the personal reflective moments. Answering these require high level of comprehension and honesty from a health professional. The professional should also be willing to learn and grow at the time of answering these questions. There a number of actions that the health professional is required to take when they try to answer these questions. These actions are; acknowledge all practice as a learning opportunity, think about what you do and the meaning of your practice experience regularly, create opportunities to share your practice experiences with others, examine the assumptions behind your practice, compare the theory of your practice to what you actually do, consider the systemic influences that impact your practice, imagine positive improvements and advocate for these through action (Kinsella, 2001). These actions will make the health professional have a proper judgment on a similar scenario. Reflective practice has the ability of transforming underperforming health professionals into competence professionals. Health professionals have the ability to relate their past experience with the situations that may be present in their current practice. Such a relationship is very important since it gives the professionals a number of options to make relevant and appropriate judgments with regards to that particular case. From the professional’s reflective actions, they can do analysis of their present situation and come up with the best solutions to the most problematic health situations. Personal reflections have proven the best method of handling very challenging health conditions in the health profession. Proponents of personal reflections also view it as form of motivation to the health professional. Among the reflective actions by the health professional, they think about their practice and giving opportunity to others and make them share their experience and life with others. It remains the biggest motivation for a health professional to give life to an individual and enable them share their life experience that they wouldn’t have without the effort s of a health professional. Moreover personal reflection requires one to be honest, trust their emotions, time commitment, motivated and regular practice. Doing all these will aid a professionals reflective development. There are different examples of reflective practice. These examples can be grouped into three major levels. They are; superficial reflective practice, medium reflective practice, and deep reflective practice. Superficial reflective is a very basic level of reflective practice. Some scholars argue that at this level there is reflective practice at all. At this level the reflection is largely descriptive. At the superficial level, the reflective practice makes reference to an existing knowledge base; it does not comment or criticize the present situation. The second level of reflective experience is the medium level. At this level of reflection, the person takes a step back from what has happened and starts to explore thoughts, feelings, assumptions and gaps in knowledge as part of the problem solving process. The professional makes sense of what has been learnt from the experience and what future action might need to take place (Kinsella, 2001).This is a very critical level of reflective practice for a health professional. The third most important and final level of reflective practice is the deep reflective practice. At this level the reflection is very depth. Kinsella, 2001 argues that at this level of reflection shows that the experience has created a change in the person – his/her views of self, relationships, community of practice, society and so on. To do so, the writer needs to be aware of the relevance of multiple perspectives from contexts beyond the chosen incident – and how the learning from the chosen incident will impact on other situations. Personal reflective remain very critical in meeting the demands of a number of health concerns today. Health professionals are able to advance their performance and career with proper use of reflective arguing. Services in which health professional offer can be more demanding and challenging, therefore health professional should employ personal reflective to solve most of these problems Reference Kinsella, E. A. (2001). Reflections on reflective practice. Canadian Journal of Occupational Therapy, 68(3), 195-198. Schon, D. (2009). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. New York: Basic. Townsend, E. (1998). Good intentions overruled: A critique of empowerment in the routine organization of mental health services. Toronto: University of Toronto Press. Read More