Reflection as creative practice: an exploration of arts-based practice workshops with student midwives

Abstract

Educators must use diverse tools to facilitate effective student learning, enabling students to translate taught theory into the professional practice environment. Reflection is an essential midwifery skill that is needed to practice effectively, and is often taught by exploring a variety of reflective models in a written format during undergraduate healthcare programmes. This article reports and evaluates the activities and experiences of facilitating innovative arts-based practice workshops using collage for student midwives and how they felt this contributed to their ability to successfully reflect. The article explores undertaking the art of reflection as a creative practice from both a lecturing and learning perspective, to explore student midwives' reflective abilities using alternative methods to the written word. Combining arts and science in a safe educational space provided students with an alternative way to view and explore their practice learning and reflection by using a holistic range of skills.