Clinical Reflection: The experience of Nursing Students in the Obstetric Unit

Abstract

Background: The reflective journal, a tool in students’ learning that helps student reflecting on and store their clinical learning in their memory. It also helps in better understanding of clinical practice as well as understanding of what they experienced and learned, provided the clinical instructors are not available for every student all the times. The outcome increases the confidence of the students and facilitates the ability of the instructor to customize clinical experiences for individual students based on their learning gaps. Method: Reflective journals of 40 nursing students from fall and spring 2013-2014 assigned to their Obstetric (OB) clinical placement were analyzed. Of them, 12 were interviewed face-to-face and were asking to relay their experiences in the postpartum units, labor and delivery, antepartum, and neonatal intensive care unit (NICU). Interviews were digitally recorded and transcribed verbatim. A qualitative phenomenological approach was used to explore the basic social process, which attempts to transcend student nurses’ experience regarding clinical reflection as a continual process and move it from a description of what is happening to an understanding of the process by which it happens. Findings: The findings of this study have the potential to contribute new knowledge concerning the process of experiential learning using reflection. Through reflection, nursing students in their obstetric clinical rotations demonstrated progress towards professional nursing status by developing confidence, and knowledge in nursing. Conclusion: Reflective journals as an educational strategy for facilitating learning in the extent of practice setting, and level of reflection achieved. Maternal-child nursing student was the participant in the process of his/her own clinical experience in various areas in the OB clinical unit. Reflective journaling also facilitates the nursing students’ learning and progress towards building confidence and knowledge, which are main components in providing quality of care.