How To Reflect

A Quick Guide For GP Trainees

1. Document your cases

Keep your Notes app handy on your phone. Jot down every case you see, and bold or star everything that might be reflection-worthy.

2. Focus on ONE capability area every 3–4 days

Declutter your brain. Pick one target area to reflect on every week.

3. Pick a case.

Once you know what you need to reflect on that week, laser in on cases related to that competency. You’ll find a surprising amount of them now that you’ve started jotting them down. Welcome to the world of limitless ideas.

In our example reflection, we’re picking case 1 for the capability area of practising holistically/promoting health.

4. Speed-dump.

This is important: set a timer for 5–10 minutes and vomit words. Write down everything you remember about the case as quickly as you can. No fixing mistakes or going back for typos. Brain dump now, fix it all later.

5. Flesh it out. Reflect.

Elaborate on your key points from the brain dump, keeping your competency in mind. Here you could take it in more than one direction. You can elaborate on how it was an example of you practising holistically. You could also say how it showed good communication skills.

Focus on your feelings about what happened. Then, switch from subjective to objective: critically analyse what you did.

• What factors influenced your decision making? Can you identify conscious and unconscious biases in the interaction?
• How did your patient feel about the interaction? How did other people feel about it?
• What will you differently next time? What are your learning points from this encounter? How can you show evidence you have done these?

6. Revisit, re-edit, share.

Come back later to see things from a new perspective. Cut out extraneous words and sentences. Touch up your reflection for the last time and share with your supervisor. Voila! You are now a reflective practitioner.

Note: Make sure there’s no patient-identifiable data. This is also not supposed to be a full account of what happened — focus on what you learnt and what that means to how you practice.