Document Type

Article

Source of Publication

Learning and Teaching in Higher Education Gulf Perspectives

Publication Date

11-1-2025

Abstract

Purpose – Reflective practice is crucial in clinical nursing education at a nursing college in Al Ain. This study aims to explore nursing students’ perspectives on reflective practice in a clinical setting. Design/methodology/approach – The study employed an exploratory case study design, using semi-structured interviews to collect data from eight nursing students studying at a nursing college in the UAE. The recorded interviews were transcribed verbatim and manually analysed using thematic analysis. Findings – Three main themes have been extracted, and these are the significance of reflection, facilitating factors and hindering factors. Four sub-themes emerged from the facilitating factors: moral awareness of patient care, instructor’s support and teaching approach, group work, and exposure to new experiences. Another four sub-themes emerged from the hindering factors: limited opportunities for practice, inconvenient clinical schedule, heavy study load and fear of devaluation hindered their reflective practice. Research limitations/implications – The researcher who conducted the interviews did not initially specify the identity of each student (e.g., S1, S2, etc.) concerning their involvement in reflection. The study is limited to third-year students. The sample size in this study was also small, and the study population was only female students who studied in one nursing college. Therefore, this population may not represent all nursing students in the college, in other branches of the college or in other colleges in the UAE. Practical implications – The administrators of the nursing college must introduce a clear policy that urges all clinical instructors to encourage students to use reflective practice and the curriculum developers to include reflective practice in the nursing curriculum. This would help standardize the reflective practice. Moreover, nurturing the facilitating factors while simultaneously addressing the inhibiting factors should be given utmost priority and importance to ensure the effective application of reflective practice. Additionally, educators need to take advantage of the latest artificial intelligence (AI) applications, which are mainly invented to engage users in spoken reflections, to train and improve students’ reflective practice. Social implications – Enhancing reflective practice can help future nurses think critically, analyse and evaluate situations and link theory to practice. This align with integrating twenty-first-century skills and the satisfaction of the UAE’s SDG 4 and SDG 3. Consequently, they contribute to enhancing the quality of patient care and outcomes. Originality/value – While prior studies have also drawn upon Gibbs’ reflective cycle theory, their focus centred on exploring nursing students’ perceptions of reflection during clinical practice or its effect on enhancing students’ learning, communication and critical thinking skills. These studies, unlike ours, did not explore the nursing students’ experiences with reflective practice in terms of the factors that could influence its application. Our extensive search revealed that this study might be the first to discuss all the derived factors by integrating them into the different stages of Gibbs’ reflective cycle model.

ISSN

2077-5504

Publisher

Emerald

First Page

1

Last Page

17

Disciplines

Education | Medicine and Health Sciences

Keywords

Clinical training, Gibbs’ reflective cycle theory, Nursing students, Reflective practice

Scopus ID

105025454504

Creative Commons License

Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.

Indexed in Scopus

yes

Open Access

yes

Open Access Type

Gold: This publication is openly available in an open access journal/series

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