We don’t learn from experience, until…
Making way for wisdom as an educator.
I first started my teaching career without many basics in teaching theories and practice. I taught students just like I was taught many years before.
Of course, lectures are the main teaching mode with the help of PowerPoint. I tried my best, performed my best while giving lectures in front of more than 100 students and I was positive all points were explained clearly and my students will get it.
When some students failed, I have nobody to blame except them. Lecturers should give lectures and everybody was doing the same so there was nothing wrong at my side, so I assumed.
Until one day, when I marked their exam papers. The question was about the investigations that need to be done to diagnose acute leukaemia, a type of blood cancer which we see a lot of immature cancerous cells in the bone marrow.
While we expected the answer to be bone marrow smear but the answer that was in front of me was pap smear!!
I was devastated!!
(bone marrow smear- taking the bone marrow from the patient’s bone and smear it on the slide. Pap smear-taking the sample from the cervix and smear it on the slide).
In this fast-paced life, we tend to live our days in a rather unmindful state. We rush to complete the task, clear the list and get the things done for the day. The routine resumes the next day.
We survived day-by-day in this state of mind, well… almost.
There is no better time, other than now, for us to pause, think and reflect on things that are happening within us, around us and related to us. Take time to provide meaning to all these situations and learn from them in order to make the world a better place for us and everybody.
I know, some of you may think this sounds philosophical but in reality, we, particularly as health care professionals need this more than before.
One of the guidelines in GMC (General Medical Council, UK), in the domain of professional development, emphasized the need of
‘you (health care professional) to reflect regularly on your standards of medical practice.’
The word reflection originated from a Latino word that means ‘to bend’ or ‘to turn back’. It has various definitions in the literature but the one that I can relate the most is :
reflection is an active process of witnessing one’s one experience in order to examine it more closely, give meaning to it and learn from it.
Reflection is an important skill in moulding and nurturing self-regulated learners and also an essential skill in life-long learning and professional practice.
Reflection enables us to objectively analyse our practice, identified what works, what not and why. Health care professionals then can plan and work to improve their practice.
Health professional who practice regular reflective practice potentially to develop better levels of self-awareness about themselves as practitioners and as a human being, One who knows himself/herself, has a better chance to learn from their experience and surrounding, a skill that is vital in this profession. This lead to better professional development and personal growth, hopefully leading to the transformation of healthcare.
Our future doctors and health professionals need to be exposed to do their own reflection in the training itself.
At this point, we might start thinking (or reflecting),
am I a reflective teacher and practitioner? Where should I start and how?
For those who are novel to this concept, this SlideShare will give you some insight and basics in Reflective Medical Practice for you to reflect and maybe start to teach your students how to reflect. It also covers the framework that can be used to apply reflection in teaching.
If you have some extra time to spare, the following SlideShare discusses the basics of reflective teaching and how to start doing it.
By now, you may be asking yourself, what is the relation of my story at the beginning with reflective practice?
Of course, I was devastated at the beginning. I have a mixed feeling about the situation, was not sure whether I should laugh or cry.
At that point, I started to reflect, and the first question that came to my mind was WHY?
Why did the student give such a ridiculous answer for a simple and straightforward question??
Why did it happen?
Was the explanation not clear enough?
Was the timetable so packed and the students did not have enough time to study?
How can I improve my teaching delivery?
What can I do differently?
Since that incident, I know I need to do things differently and started to explore various ways of teaching methods and trying to change the way I teach.
And it makes me realize that reflection is not a short term process and I still have a long way to go.
“Reflection and action must never be undertaken independently.”
— Paulo Freire
