Reflective Practice in Health Professions Education

In health professions, reflection is a central tenet that assists practitioners in development of their professional knowledge and practice. Indeed, for many health professions, critical reflectivity has become a core competency within registration standards. This chapter presents the theory that underpins reflective practice beginning with a historical overview. John Dewey’s seminal work How We Think (1933) paved the way for the current thinking on reflective practice. In presenting the theoretical underpinnings of reflective practice, pedagogical examples are provided. Discussion on the tensions between reflective practice as a pedagogy, service learning, where the reflective learning activity is given lipservice by students, versus clinical practice is provided. We explore how reflective practice in theory can become reflective practice in action. The exciting opportunities that current technologies afford in being creative with reflective practice are presented along with suggested pedagogical activities in scaffolding reflective practice.