The Student Nurse's Guide to Successful Reflection:Ten Essential Ingredients

This book is an easy to read, practical guide that will show you what reflection is and how you can do it successfully.

Assuming no prior knowledge, it introduces you to ten essential ingredients to becoming an effective reflective practitioner. Chapters will equip you with evidence-based understanding and ideas for application to your own situation, and support you to become an emotionally resilient, self-aware individual who can reflect and improve on your practice.

In clear and supportive language, Nicola Clarke will guide you on your journey to developing the crucial reflection skills you need for your career as a nurse. The book includes:

• A step by step exploration of what reflection involves

• Ways to develop the skills you will need to do your own reflection

• A ‘how-to’ approach to using reflective models

• Practical and jargon-free guidance on how to reflect

• A chapter on reflective writing

• Chapters about qualities you will need in your reflection, such as being person-centred and empathetic

The Student Nurse’s Guide to Successful Reflection is a must-have text for all nursing students as well as useful reading for those involved in supporting them.

With a Foreword by Theo Stickley, Associate Professor, University of Nottingham, UK.

'Reflection is a "way of being" encompassing many ingredients. Clarke, with great thoroughness and care, introduces these, constructively supporting students towards developing self-insight and understanding of others. Her advice, explanations, illustrations and exercises are lucid and paced, helping nurses towards sufficient strength to undertake the developmental change which effective reflective practice brings. And to become practitioners who are far more than competent: nurses who are calmly self-aware, receptive and perceptive'.

Gillie Bolton, PhD, former Senior Research Fellow, Medicine and the Arts, King’s College London, UK

'Reflection is a much discussed topic in nursing, but some students find it difficult to reflect on their own practice. Nicola Clarke’s ten essential ingredients provide a clear and explicit guide to effective reflective practice and as such this should be a key text for all student nurses. The chapters of this new text offer clear learning outcomes, practical advice and models to follow in order to develop a genuine, honest and balanced reflective writing style. It is an engaging and informative read which promotes understanding of this important process'.

Anita Savage Grainge, RMN, RGN, RNT, Senior Lecturer, University of York, UK

'An engaging book, which deals with the complexity of reflection in a clear, logical and in-depth manner. Developed around her extended definition of reflective practice, Clarke clearly and logically enables the reader to build their understanding of reflective practice by focusing on her ten ingredients. The structure of the book, focusing on two ingredients in each chapter, allows Clarke to provide clarity whilst at the same time showing the reader how the ingredients fit together to build a whole that is greater than the sum of its parts. The focus on critical and analytic skills as well as person-centredness based on Rogers’ core conditions provides a strong theoretical basis for students to understand reflective practice. The use of questions and examples throughout are engaging and will be useful for students and tutors alike.  

I think this book will be excellent for all healthcare workers – students and qualified alike. Whilst it is aimed at nurses, the principles apply across healthcare. I think it is a real gem and certainly the best book I have read about reflective practice'.

Dr Rosie Stenhouse, Nursing Studies, University of Edinburgh, UK