Thing 5: Reflection

Thing 5 is about reflective practice. Over the years I have  come across enough books on reflective practice - it's certainly a big topic in the health professions - but I must admit to never taking the time to actually read any of them!

 I think I first came across the term in my first professional post when I was Subject Librarian for health in an FE/HE College. I was the library representative on the team putting forward a new degree in occupational therapy for validation. The degree contained a module on reflective practice and during the discussion one panel member dismissed it as just "navel-gazing" -which I remember did not go down very well!

I suppose after this I've always though reflective practice must be quite complex but Thing 5 has actually made me realise that it isn't! I like the simple "Plan - Do - Review". I can do that, in fact I am doing it already, maybe just not in a very organised way. 

Well, some things are organised. Such as gaining formal feedback from people attending my training courses. Attendees are sent a post-training survey 6 weeks after attending training so I gain feedback that way.

I think I am just not organised at doing reflective thinking  myself - at actually taking time after training or after attending an event to think critically about it and look at what went right and what went wrong, and more importantly, what am I going to do about it.

Thinking about CPD23 - I'm enjoying it. I have my very own blog - my first blog. I have been writing and (some) people are reading it! That's amazing in itself.  I probably need to make the bold step of blogging about non-CPD23 things, but I think that will come as I get more confident.  It's certainly a space I can use to reflect on what I'm doing, and maybe getting feedback from others. I'm reading a lot more blogs myself - and I've even left comments! That's something I had never done before.  I found reflecting on my online brand particularly useful, as again that was not something I had considered before.

So, from Thing 5 I will take away reflection is not scary, but it is just something that I need to work harder at building into my everyday practice.