Developing Professional Competence In Health Information Industry

Question: Discuss about the Value Of Reflective Practice And Its Role In Developing Professional Competence In Health Information Industry. Answer: Introduction To develop professional competence, the first step is to develop self-awareness and an understanding of the self. Reflective practice is an important exercise that contextualises this self with healthcare practice, thus enabling the improvement of healthcare services, as well as development of practitioners having comprehensive outlook, simultaneously alarmed with health inconsistencies, and keeping in mind access, justice and diversity to healthcare services. The first step to reflective practice is an exploration of values within self that mobilises health professionals facilitating a dialogue through peers, and helps in discovering the social and chronological milieus of healthcare practice. This also includes the levels of methodological and applied reflection as encompassing practitioners consider ethical, principled and historical frameworks of their training (Gardner, 2009; Hickson, 2011). This approach also appeals to means of significance, and training improvement techniques thus developing involved and appreciated action as a context for the development of health professionals teaching (Ghaye, 2007; Dewing, 2010). The aim of critical reflection exercise is to enable scholars and specialists to inquire critical questions of themselves about their practice, and thus addressing the significant issues, which were first encountered during their practice. Role of Reflective Practice in developing professional competence Reflective practice has an extensive history in nursing education. It developed from the efforts of distinguished educationalist, John Dewey, and thus practice of reflection was originally hypothesized as an energetic, tenacious, and cautious contemplation of any belief or knowledge in the light of the grounds that maintain it, and the further conclusions to which it trends. Thus reflection is a skill as well as the aptitude, to contemplate critically about ones own decisions and actions, and simultaneously to realize the larger contexts within which these decisions were made (Fook, and Gardner, 2007). People learn not only by contemplating but by doing: and also by reflecting about things they were doing and the circumstances in which they were doing it that way. Reflection therefore, is a part of the course of doing some work explicitly and hence, to bring about the foreseen consequences which in turn challenge the hypothesis at the first place. Donald Schn was another academician who drawn-out on this way of contemplating, thus cultivating his impression of reflection-in-action, as the practice through which professionals makes choices in the process of their healthcare work. This idea facilitates a constant interaction between thought and action, thus increasing the capability to be proactive in real time, which represented the truly reflective health practitioner. The approach, in which reflective exercise has derived to be understood and applied in the healthcare, is now far indifferent from its original conception (Rolfe, 2014). Although healthcare professionals are now obliged to reflect as part of their registering and specialized growth, for example over the Nursing Competency Assessment Schedule and the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Board (Levett-Jones et al 2013), this has become a justly powerless application which healthcare practitioners employ once a year, rather than in their commonplace practice. Rolfe cries this turn of events, contending that reflection should led to radical critique based on the principle that knowledge produced by healthcare practitioners reflecting on their own understandings, is of at least equal value to knowledge derived by academics from pragmatic research. The reflective practice had traditionally been developed by health educators who understood the importance of evidence based practice and information based on academic research. During those timings, reflections were focused on clinical events and the objective was to identify researchable questions. This was difficult for a number of reasons. Firstly it positioned burden of learning on one subject that necessitated students to move very quickly and superficially through self-reflection identifying research questions to actually conduct and write academic literature reviews. Secondly, this approach placed a burden on the teaching staff that required teaching both research and reflective skills within the same course. At the universities, with the starting of a separate research subject in the postgraduate programs, the focus shifted towards developing meaningful and lifelong skills of critical reflection. Academicians should embolden reflection as a way of life, not just a one off task. It is only in this way that reflective practice could reach its potential to be a radical technology, capable of producing health care practitioners providing person centred care, and act as agents of social change, simultaneously placing health and wellness in its wider social context (Nelson, 2012). They should buttress their approach with well-known theory and methods of reflection recognising the unique issues of health professionals as adult learners (Dewing 2010). This requires more innovative and creative ways of practicing reflection and exploring options for online portfolios as a means of learning and assessment (Ghaye, 2007; Ross, 2011) Conclusion Thus Critical reflection enables deep analysis of ethical issues in healthcare practice. Reflection often reveals deep discomfort of students, or other peoples practicing within health systems that were based on risk management, rather than on patient centred, compassionate care. Reflection should aim towards providing patient-centered care. The patient-centred nursing framework could provide tools and concepts that students could relate to when faced with ethical dilemmas in their practice and workplaces. Most students can strongly commit to providing compassionate, patient-centred care, and critical reflection is aimed to validate and reinforce ethics in nursing profession. This is a consistent theme in students reflections which can be sought to challenge students right through the first assessment asking students to equally consider the personal, ethical, aesthetic and empirical aspects of their nursing practice. Thus reflective practice plays a vital role in inculcating professi onal competence in healthcare industry.