The self critical doctor: helping students become more reflective

doi:10.1136/bmj.39503.608032.AD

BMJ 2008;336:827-830 (12 April), doi:10.1136/bmj.39503.608032.AD

Practice

Teaching Rounds

The self critical doctor: helping students become more reflective

Erik Driessen, assistant professor¹, Jan van Tartwijk, associate professor², Tim Dornan, professor³

¹ Department of Educational Development and Research, Faculty of Health, Medicine and Life Sciences, Maastricht University, Maastricht, the Netherlands, ² ICLON Graduate School of Teaching, Leiden University, Leiden, the Netherlands, ³ University of Manchester and Salford Royal Hospitals, Hope Hospital, Salford M6 8HD

Correspondence to: E Driessen e.driessen@educ.unimaas.nl

Reflection underpins learning from experience, so how do youfoster reflection in your students? This article explores thebest ways to do this

The first 150 words of the full text of this article appear below.

Key points

Reflection is vital for learning from clinical experiences

Studentsdo not generally adopt reflective learning habits spontaneously,so teachers must help them

Clinical teachers can stimulatestudents to assess and analyse their actions and devise alternativeactions

To do so, they must provide a challenging but safelearning environment, give feedback, and ask the right questions

Theskill of the clinical teacher is to listen well and ask openquestions

Defining reflection

Reflection means letting future behaviourbe guided by a systematic and critical analysis of past actionsand their consequences

Whether or not "experience" means "making the same mistakeswith increasing confidence over an impressive number of years"¹depends on how self analytical and critical you are. When youspeak of your students needing to be "more reflective" you meanthey should let their future behaviour be guided by systematicand critical evaluation and analysis of actions and beliefsand the . . . [Full text of this article]

Box 1 Case scenario: Victor

Prerequisites for reflection in clinical settings

Box 2 Portfolios
Teaching methods for fostering students’ reflective skills
Action
Looking back on action: self assessment
Awareness of essential aspects: analysis
Box 3 Review of Victor’s portfolio
Creating or identifying alternative methods of action: change
Box 4 How Victor can analyse and change his behaviour
Teaching tips