Influence of Reflective Writing on Nursing Students Clinical Learning and Practice

The aim of the study was to assess the influence of reflective writing on nursing students’ clinical learning and practice and identify the perceived barriers and accessibility of guided reflective journal among undergraduate nursing students in Babcock University, Ilishan-Remo, Ogun State, Nigeria. The study adopted a descriptive survey design as the research was only interested in determining the influence of the independent variables on the dependent variables without manipulating any of the variables. A Population of 130 students in 400 and 500 levels were used. Results of the reliability test, using Cronbach’s alpha was 0.80. Findings from this study revealed that, the status of influence of reflective writing of nursing students’ clinical learning and practice is high with a mean score of 1.966887. However, the participants expressed a host of barriers ranging from “Time constraints” which was the most (79.2%, 1.7923±0.40722) frequently cited by the respondents, followed by “Writing the reflective journal took too much time” (77.7%, 1.7769±0.41792), “The briefing of reflective practice was not adequate” (73.8%, 1.7385±0.44117), “Lack of supportive environment” (73.8%, 1.7385±0.44117) and “Uncertainty of using an unfamiliar learning approach” (70.8%, 1.7077±0.45658) to “The benefits of journaling are not clear to me” (53.8%, 1.5385±0.50045) which was the least frequently cited by the students. In view of these it is recommended that guided reflective teaching skills with a rich blend of a cocktail of models discussed in this article be deployed in the students’ training and special seminars with the aim of overcoming identified barriers to Guided Reflective Writing.

Keywords: Reflection, Reflective writing, Clinical learning, Practice, Nursing Students.