Effects of Reflection on Clinical Learning of Medical Students

Reflection is considered as a critical characteristic in professional competitions. Despite propagation of reflection as an important educational issue and existence of several helpful patterns, instructions conducted by teachers to explaining and expanding of it, are very little. Studies related to this topic were mainly performed in the field of nursing. Therefore, we decided to evaluate the effects of reflection on medical students. This study was conducted between August 2012 to January 2013, and 100 medical students who were training in Pediatric Department of Tabriz Children’s Hospital, were included in this interventional (before and after) study. At the beginning a questionnaire was filled by participants as "pretest". Then, in the workshop, principles of reflection and learning domain were taught to them. A notebook entitled "What I have learned" was prepared by them and daily learning was recorded in three aspects of reflection (mirror, microscope and binocular). After three months the same questionnaires were filled as "posttest". Results obtained from comparing pretest and posttest and information acquired from students notebook were the basis for statistical analyze. There was statistically significant difference for each question (P < 0.05). Deepening the learning, reducing errors, organizing and integrating of individual knowledge, increasing confidence and responsibility, improved patient care and accuracy of interventions were some benefits of reflection method. Reflection is very helpful educational strategy and can help the students in their communication and increasing skill and knowledge. It also helps to organize and integrate their learning by guiding them in clinical situations.