Upgrading Learning In Nursing Preceptorship Using A Reflection Tool

Abstract

Nursing, as a progressive and developing profession, requires those who engage in it to demonstrate well developed critical thinking, as early as their undergraduate training. Reflection skills are a mechanism for developing critical thinking and they form part of the core of the nursing training programme. Preceptors have a major role in helping students perform reflection, through guided reflection that facilitates the development of critical thinking. Nonetheless, it is hard to instil productive reflective thinking in students and to sufficiently develop their critical thinking. An academic nursing school in central Israel developed a tool called Reflective Nursing Debriefing (RND), based on well-established principles of reflection, which constitutes an initiated, systematic and structured reflective learning tool for the development of critical thinking. This tool is used by students to perform reflection and by preceptors for the purpose of monitored involvement in guided reflection. In practice, preceptors do not achieve full utilization of the tool, and thus students are not exposed to its potential contribution to developing their critical thinking. The case study presented in this paper portrays the issue by analysing three cases that utilized this tool, with the preceptor employing guided reflection, and it suggests important recommendations for preceptors. Additionally, it offers professional nursing education recommendations with regard to the systems responsibility for achieving professionalization of preceptors. This will help preceptors use the tool properly and develop a prominent skill necessary for guided reflection and in general, develop better critical thinking among students.