Journal

Assignment Description:  A reflective journal is a useful tool that allows you to reflect and use critical thinking to learn and gain insight from your clinical experiences.  Your reflective journal should not simply be a list of activities you did that day.  Instead, it is an opportunity for you to think about the events that happened during your clinical day and your decisions and actions in different situations.  It will help your clinical faculty to learn more about your experiences and identify future learning opportunities for you.

Assignment Instructions:  Using the John’s Model of Reflection, reflect on your feelings, concerns and reactions to your clinical experience the mental health hospital.  This can relate to skills associated with communication and/or nurse-patient relationship, patient safety or quality topics, teaching opportunities, critical decision-making, nursing interventions, and/or collaboration with other healthcare professionals.

Each reflective journal should align with the components of the John’s Model of Reflection to include:

• Description of the experience
• Reflection
• Influencing Factors
• Could I have dealt with it better
• Learning

When writing your journal, remember to maintain confidentiality.  Do not include patient names or initials.  Instead, use the following sequential nomenclature for the semester:  Patient 01, Patient 02, etc.

Remember, the journal is your reflection on the experience – not what you did in clinical!

Johns Model of reflection
Johns model is based on five cue questions which enable you to break down your
experience and reflect on the process and outcomes. John (1995) used seminal
work by Carper (1978) as the basis for his model exploring aesthetics, personal
knowing, ethics and empirics and then encouraging the reflective practitioner to
explore how this has changed and improved their practice.
Carper B (1978) Fundamental patterns of knowing in nursing. Advances in Nursing
Science. 1, 1, 13-23.
Greater Manchester AHP/HCS Life Long Learning Project Team. Hand out 3 Models
of reflection. Available URL
http://64.233.183.104/search?q=cache:Ta_9a2Ad4FUJ:www.bolton.nhs.uk/SHA/LLL/resources/reflective/Framework%2520for
%2520Reflection.doc+Johns+Model+of+Structure+Reflection&hl=en&ct=clnk&cd=4&gl=uk
Accessed 11th January 2008
Hilliard C (2006) Using structured reflection on a critical incident to develop a
professional portfolio. Nursing standard 21 (2) 35-40
Johns C (1995) Framing learning through reflection within Carper’s fundamental
ways of knowing in nursing. Journal of Advanced Nursing. 22, 2,
226-234
Johns Model of reflection
Johns Model of Reflection
Description of the experience
Describe the experience and what were the significant factors?
Refection
What was I trying to achieve and what are the consequences?
Influencing factors
What things like internal/external/knowledge affected my decision making?
Could I have dealt with it better
What other choices did I have and what were those consequences?
Learning
What will change because of this experience and how did I feel about the experience
How has this experience changed my ways of knowing
o Empirics – scientific
o Ethics – moral knowledge
o Personal – self awareness
o Aesthetics – the art of what we do, our own experiences