Facilitating students’ reflections on community practice: A new approach

In Australia, the nurses’ registration board necessitates nurses to be competent reflective practitioners. Consequently, student nurses require opportunities to develop those capacities. This chapter discusses the challenges of engaging nursing students in a novel pedagogical approach aimed to enhance their critical reflectivity. The example is community health practicum experience. Aside from the students’ assessment requirement to submit a clinical portfolio, there was no post-practicum follow-up to augment their learning of their community health placements. At the time this study was undertaken, the graduate-entry students only spent 1 week on their community health practicum and third-year undergraduate students 2 weeks. However, previous research has clearly identified that student nurses spend their first week assimilating into a new clinical setting before they are able to focus and reflect on their learning needs. The community health facilities students attend are quite varied in what they might offer in terms of opportunities and engagement. To augment learning a discussion forum was created on a project-specific, web-based learning interface, ‘Critical reflection on Community Practice’. Students were requested to upload a short video clip to share their learning experience of their community health placements. The videos were analysed for both evidence of reflectivity using The Reflective Writing Framework and knowledge content through content analysis. Findings illustrate a richer depth of knowledge, heightened awareness, and enhanced reflectivity. An examination on the benefits and limitations of video as a pedagogical approach for facilitating post-practicum critical reflection is presented.