The use of brief written educational material to promote reflection amongst trained nurses: a pilot study

The UKCC (1995) suggest that in order for nurses to maintain their registration, they must maintain a personal professional profile via reflection, and there are numerous approaches to the teaching of reflection. Similarly, several models of reflection exist. However, much of this activity has occurred without attempts to establish the effectiveness of either reflection or attempts to teach it. The current study attempted to examine whether written educational material could significantly improve nurses' reflective ability. Nineteen practising nurses were recruited from a variety of sources and offered an educational package, largely based on Boud et al. (1985) model of reflection in learning. In a repeated measures design study, these participants completed a reflective exercise before and after offering of the educational material. Their scripts were rated, using Wong et al.'s (1995) tool, by three raters, two of whom were unaware of whether the scripts were completed before or after offering of the educational material. An initial analysis showed that there were no statistically significant changes in subjects' reflective ability following education. However, removal from the analysis of 6 participants who had a pre-test ability at the highest possible level (and for whom no improvement was, therefore, possible) resulted in a significant improvement in participants' ability from pre- to post-test (z = -2.4450, P = 0.0145). Interrater reliability calculated using Cronbach's Alpha was 0.7210 for pretest reflective accounts and 0.7369 for post-test reflective accounts.