SPECIAL INTEREST REPORT PLATFORM PRESENTATION

DEVELOPMENT OF A TOOL TO FACILITATE REFLECTIVE PRACTICE IN UNDERGRADUATE PHYSIOTHERAPY STUDENTS DURING CLINICAL EDUCATION. Constantinou M^1,2; ¹Griffith University. ²The University of Queensland

PURPOSE: The need to find the best approach to facilitate reflective practice in physiotherapy undergraduate students led to this educational action research project. RELEVANCE: Trained health professionals such as physiotherapists need to continually reflect on their performance to facilitate life long learning during their careers. By being reflective practitioners, physiotherapists will ensure the use of a best evidence approach in their patient management. The process of reflective practice needs to commence during undergraduate education in order to be developed to a point where it becomes automatic at the time of graduation. Physiotherapy students study the principles and practice of Physiotherapy in preparation for clinical practice. Undergraduate clinical practice in Australia is done under the supervision of registered physiotherapists trained as clinical educators. This is a significant time of learning consolidation and professional development for the students and the ideal time to develop reflective practice, and become self-directed and autonomous. Reflective practice can be facilitated through the use of reflective journal writing. DESCRIPTION: Physiotherapy students at an Australian University in their final undergraduate year were asked to use a ‘diary’ during their first four clinical units. They were given no specific guidelines. Then as part of an educational intervention the students were given specific structured guidelines on how to use a reflective journal, which was to be used during the subsequent and last four clinical units of their course. EVALUATION: This action research project evaluated and compared the students’ perception of the clarity of the instructions and of the benefits gained both from the diary and the reflective journal use. Two questionnaires were sent to the students, one at the end of the first four clinical units, to evaluate the ’diary’ and one at the end of the final four clinical units to evaluate the reflective journal. The results between the two questionnaires were collated and compared using the SPSS^® program. The final outcome indicated that the students found some form of a ‘diary’ or journal useful as a reference, planning or reflection tool or a combination of these. However the data indicated that the guided reflective journal was perceived as more effective in facilitating reflective thinking and practice in the physiotherapy students (38.97% from 26 respondents) than the ‘diary’ (16.83% from 35 respondents. CONCLUSIONS: In conclusion guided reflective journal writing is perceived as a useful tool in facilitating reflective practice in physiotherapy undergraduate students during their clinical education. As result of the findings of this project, guided reflective journal writing was included in the clinical components of the undergraduate physiotherapy course at this university. IMPLICATIONS: The inclusion of guided reflective journals in the clinical educational component of physiotherapy courses would be a useful tool to facilitate reflective practice in physiotherapy students, which is desirable in health professionals. KEYWORDS: reflection, journal, physiotherapy. FUNDING ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS: This work was supported by the University of Queensland. CONTACT: m.constantinou@griffith.edu.au