Abstract
Reflective journal writing can be a useful heuristic tool to foster critical thinking skills and develop reflective clinical practice in nursing. When combined with a distance education delivery format, the online journal helps to leverage the strengths of reflective learning with educational technology as well as provide a seamless record of learning outcomes across the curriculum. The authors discuss the incorporation of an online reflective journal into a distance education clinical course and provide guidelines for educators considering a similar approach.
Clinical competence in an applied discipline such as nursing can be facilitated through various types of educational and self-developmental strategies. Reflection on practice and self-awareness is one way to improve clinical competence by employing such meta-cognitive strategies as diagnostic reasoning, clinical decision making, critical analysis, and self-examination. 1 Reflection is an essential component of critical thinking and the skills required for its development need to be taught and practiced in professional nursing courses.
The reflective journal is being used in the education of professional nurses as an instrument for the development of reflective practitioners. 2-5 As a clinical teaching tool, the reflective journal can easily be adapted to an electronic format to create the practical and social spaces that ensure reflective learning in a Web-based environment. Reflective journaling has been employed at our university to reach graduate nursing students in practicum experiences affiliated with distance education courses. It has served as a force to help shape learning outcomes, nurture role- and value-based competencies, and increase student accountability at remote sites of learning.