 Happy new year everybody! This is another vlog. Thank you so so much for tuning in as always. Let's start 2021 right shall we? So some lovely lovely people out there have requested a vlog all about reflections and how to actually write reflections for assignments and I thought this was actually a really good one to do because unless someone tells you what to do and how to do it and things like that, how do you know how to write a reflection for an assignment if that makes sense and hopefully they're teaching you how to do this out there and giving you some tips and pointers out of the way but if not don't worry I'm here I'm going to try and help you as best I can in this vlog. Fingers crossed. So my first tip for this is think of it like any other assignment so you want to make sure it's got good structure and to help you with this structure for your reflection it's always good to use a reflective cycle so for me I always used Gibbs just because I found it the most easiest to follow and there was a lot of research out there on it and there was a lot of information on the Gibbs cycle and how to write it so this is why I used the Gibbs cycle just because it was easier for me but I know a lot of people use Driscoll and there's a lot more of the reflective cycles out there if you want to use them have a little look around and find the best one that suits you and as with any assignment with the structure you're going to have a start a middle and an end just like the rest intro main body conclusion and this is kind of what you're going to be doing with your reflection so the beginning of it is going to be okay what happened the little bit of a descriptive bit and then your main body is going to be explaining a bit more detail so why is this relevant why is this relevant to the nmc code of conduct for example you're going to go to things like policies and procedures and nice guidelines building that evidence up on why it's really important and why you've recognised this situation that you're reflecting on as a high importance if that makes sense so for example in one of mine I wrote about a day where we were really really short staffed we were so short staffed there was two nurses to 29 patients on the ward and it was quite a tough time to be honest that was one of my last shifts on a ward so I thought I would use this to reflect on because it was a really good situation to reflect on because actually even though it wasn't a great situation to be in especially as a student nurse it was actually a really good learning experience and the day went really really well despite everything so it had two components to the day so I thought this would be really good to write critical analysis on and show the good sides and the bad sides what went bad what went wrong what went well all of that jazz and then come to a conclusion and how I'm going to put that in future practice because that's what your conclusion is all about it's okay so you've had your beginning what's happened you've had your main body okay this is why this is relevant this is why it's important according to the nmc code of practice and the nursing would be free council guides and standards and procedures and nice guidelines and all that jazz and this the ending the conclusion and this is how I'm going to then improve my future practice I'm going to be doing this this and this I'm going to put this in place and this is going to make me a better nurse as a result done and you can pick anything to be your reflection it doesn't matter doesn't always have to be a bad thing you can always reflect on something that went really really well and you think wow I really want to reflect on this and write about it and so then you would just it'd be exactly the same structure so what happened and then your main body is going to be all about why is this a good thing and relate it again to the nmc code of conduct the standards procedures policies and nice guidelines and all of that jazz all of your trust guidelines whatever you want to throw in there to back up why it's going good and why it's important that it's going well and that situation it happened and how then how can you improve and maintain that for future practice so it's not about improving as such and changing practice it's about okay how do I keep going and keep doing this what steps am I going to put in place to make sure that this happens again and again and I build and improve for other patients in my future practice and then we move on to referencing so I know when we were at uni there was a lot of torn things about referencing a reflection because it is your own personal experiences um but we were always told we have to have to reference and that's where your main body bit comes into play because you're going to be referencing the nmc code you're going to be referencing the government you're going to be referencing nhs england you're going to be referencing public health england you're going to be referencing the nice guidelines and policies and procedures and hospital trusts and all that jazz so yes you can put references in there and not only that however you're feeling as a student nurse there's someone has probably wrote that somewhere so literally just have a google get onto your libraries your online libraries and things like that and let's just put in a few keywords bring it up like student nurse staff shortages whatever student nurse feelings I don't know just put it all out there and you will find someone has written an article somewhere like for the nursing times for examples a good one um for best in practice things like that elzaville website I think has got some really good blogs as well nurses.co.uk I've got some blogs and things like that on there as well and the rcn i or rcn student network I think it is they do a lot of good articles as well from students so use that and put that into your explanations and back that up with your references and say okay well this is how other people feel as well this isn't just me this is how this person felt in this article it's quite easy to reference you just have to get your head around it and put it in and get used to it it is hard to start with but once you get your head around of it around it you'll think whole differently about it and you'll really get into it I hope so just to give an example so for mine with my staff shortages I felt really I think very nervous about it I didn't know what to expect I thought more was going to be expected of me because I was a student nurse and there was short staff and I had to be thrown in at the deep end kind of thing so I looked around that to see if anyone else had felt this and felt and had this sort of same experiences and wrote an article about it and there was articles about it so I threw those in there and I just backed up what I was saying to say okay I'm not the only person out there that this has happened to because in this article this student explains blah blah blah and it's a common thing out there and then you go into your main body about okay why is this important so this is important because the NMC says as a student nurse you should not be counted in the numbers so you shouldn't be used and abused when it's short staffed for example and then however on the other side if you're confident competent to do so you can help out and you can do those things to help out so it's weighing it up so that's your pro and that's your con and that's critical analysis in a way so that gave me my overall conclusion because okay even though you're not supposed to be counted in numbers according to the NMC and you're supposed to be doing this and learning and things like that however on the other side it does say as long as you're competent competent to do so and your mentor's happy with and you've got the supervision there still from afar then you are safe to do whatever not whatever you want but whatever you're trained to do you can do so in my situation I felt confident confident to go out there to help out to take on my own patients to manage it myself with the supervision of my mentor from afar so I still had that mentor there in the next bay and actually it turned out really really well and it turned out like a good day because I'd focused on my autonomy and I built on that and my the skills that I could do I built on that and it just turned out to be in conclusion a really fantastic shift and actually I built a lot from that and so then for my conclusion I would then I then put in that okay going forwards I can use all of these skills it as a newly qualified nurse I know that I've got the autonomy now because I had that confidence to do that and take my own patients and caseload so I put little bits from what I'd learned from that day and how I would use that as a newly qualified nurse going out there into practice and it just tied in really nicely and it flowed nicely like that so I'm hoping that these tips are going to make yours flow nicely like that so just some little basic rules around writing your reflections for an assignment it's really important that you keep it confidential so do not mention the trust that you worked out the wards that you worked out do not mention any names in your assignment literally keep it as minimal as possible because you don't want to break confidentiality and fail as a result so for example the wards that I worked on was an orthopedic ward I can say I worked on an orthopedic ward but I can't say the name of the hospital the ward number the trust anything like that or the names of my mentors I literally just said I was working on another orthopedic ward and my mentor and that was it I didn't use any names any trust names anything like that and it's the same actually when on social media for example so in my youtube videos or on my twitter or instagram anything like that I will never tell you the location of actually where I work and that's purely to maintain confidentiality because no one can pinpoint where I'm talking about or what patients I'm talking about or what colleagues I'm talking about because nobody knows people just know I work in Portsmouth so that's it and there's millions of gps in Portsmouth that I could be working so that's a massive tip just do not put any names in your assignments no the only time you can reference a name or a trust is if you're digging out a policy or procedure for a particular trust and then you can put okay guys in St Thomas hospitals they've got a lot of really good policies and guidelines 2018 says this this and this you can use it then but if you're talking about your own personal experience you cannot tell anybody the trust you're working at anything because it's confidential and you need to lock that in the next little rule is we were always told that for your reflection you can use I so you can be in first person for the beginning of your your reflection because you're talking about yourself your own experiences so that's okay to do that but then as I went into my main body I went into third person and I just put it into that sort of perspective so I was using nmc code and things like that to talk about my experiences and then in the conclusion I switched back to first person so I was like okay so going forward this is what I'm going to do and that's just the way we were told that we could do that and that was fine so please before you do anything as always check with your university's assignment brief guidelines and it should tell you quite clearly hopefully what you should be doing and if you can use the word I or if you have to write it in third person so to get those extra marks for your reflection assignment I would advise to go a lot more in depth so you're not just saying okay this happened and this happened you're explaining why that's important you're explaining okay how did that make you feel you're explaining why did you feel that way okay and you're going you're always asking yourself okay why why is that why am I saying this why do I feel like this you're keep asking you keep digging to unravel the layers of what's happening like an onion you're unraveling all of the layers of you and your assignment and you're explaining a little bit more but not only that you want to add all of the critical analysis like we've spoke about already you want to just be critical of everything basically and you want to show the good you want to show the bad why is this important okay this is great what's the conclusion you want to be as critical as possible we were told that we should have a critical analysis in every paragraph so just try and work it that way if you can and then lastly good references you want to show your wider reading because wider reading means more points means prizes so yes good references good quality references get the research to back it up don't just put google.com in your references because you're not going to get anywhere with that you'll probably get deducted points for that so please use good quality references you want to use research papers you want to use articles you want to use journals all the good stuff in there obviously the nmc has to be in there and government policies and procedures and guidelines can all be in there they are good quality references it's just about using those good references well in your assignment to get those points and show wider reading and to be honest when i got the hang of my references i had a reference for every like 50 words that's how i worked it out i would have reference reference reference every single 50 words i knew that i was going to have a reference because any any statement you make or anything you say that's quite bold you need to have a reference so um if you're saying for example i need to gain confidence as a nurse because this this and this okay why where's that reference come from how do you know that so you need to back it up with the reference to say this is why um and that's going to get you some brissy boyness points hopefully and the way i would work out the marking for my own assignment is i would have the assignment brief first up you should always have your assignment brief in the background and tick off the bits that you're putting in so that you know you're meeting all of the assignment brief next you want to get the marking criteria up because you want to know what you're aiming for and what grade you're aiming for so i would always go to the top grade possible because the worst i can do then is just fall back a bit so i i know if i'm hitting off those marking criterias at the top grades i know that i'm going to get a middle to a higher sort of end mark if that makes sense but if i don't do it well then i'll hit the lower marks but i know that i'm hitting the the marking criteria at least don't just go for the lowest grade come on guys go for the highest grade do as much as possible and then you'll get a decent mark and i always give this tip to people even if you're just writing a regular assignment because the person marking your paper this is all they're going to have in front of them they're going to have the assignment brief they're going to have the marking criteria and they're going to have your assignment and they're just going to go by those two so the more you can hit those marks the better for you because that's exactly what they're doing so just go on those and you'll be absolutely well away and lastly to end this vlog i'm just going to quickly briefly very quickly do a little bit on critical analysis because i know a lot of people struggle with this i did do a whole vlog on critical analysis go and check that out um but just quickly a lot of people overthink critical analysis honestly it's really really simple don't overthink it it's literally the pros and cons of something honest to god i always think of it like buying a mobile phone if you're looking at the different makes and models the different colors the different specs to make your decision on which phone to buy that's critical analysis you've got it guys you do it every day when you're purchasing things in the shops it's just literally you are the middle person looking on the outside of something or a situation or something you're writing and you're okay they're the pros they're the cons what's good about it what's bad about it done critically analyzing something done please don't overthink it that's all you have to do please don't panic about it so much that's it so i think that's everything i can't think of anything else that can guide you on reflections but if i've missed anything out or there's something that you would like a little bit more on please comment below and i'll try and do something i don't know but i'll try and help you the best i can um but that's it for me happy new year again to all of you it is going to be a rough start to the year let's face it but hopefully by the end of 2021 we're going to be on the up and onwards and it's going to be good fingers crossed i've got high hopes for the end of 21 but a massive good luck to you all stay happy stay safe stay healthy guys and i shall see you next week