Enhancing reflectivity in social, care and health professionals–identifying students’ abilities and needs

Abstract

Reflectivity, a central attribute of professional competence, has received much attention in the literature on teaching and practice of social work and increasingly also in nursing. However, there is a need to differentiate the factors that make up reflective abilities and to relate these more specifically to the influence that personality, experience, training and organisational context have on their development, the latter with a view to the risk managerial objectives pose in terms of instrumental uses of reflectivity. We analysed the reflective abilities of 99 practice-experienced post-graduate students from social work and nursing backgrounds on a master's programme with Supervision and Management study sections at Charles University, Prague, by applying and statistically analysing two proven tests (SRIS and PHLMS). Social workers in the Czech Republic, in contrast to nurses, have access to supervision recommended by law and we hypothesised that they would hence score higher in reflectivity. This was disconfirmed while both health and social work students who had been accepted on the Supervision study section scored significantly higher on account of highly specific past supervisory experiences complying with ANSE standards. The results show that effective training for reflection requires elaborate preparation independent of managerial constraints.