Reflective practice: a focus for caring

Nurse education has long been plagued by a perceived disjuncture between theory and practice. This paper explores the use of reflection as a mechanism to enable students of nursing to overcome this problem. A grounded theory approach is used to study a group of first-year students undertaking a 3-year undergraduate nursing course. Results of the study indicate that the use of the reflective processes of clinical debriefing and journaling does impact on the environment, the process, and the focus of learning. Anxiety associated with the learning environment was reduced through peer support and cooperation. In addition, students moved from a passive to a more active mode of learning. The most significant finding was that, over time, reflective processes resulted in the emergence of the client as the central focus of care.