Introducing dental students to reflective practice: a dental educator’s reflections

Abstract

There is growing consensus that being reflective and developing reflective practice is an important part of becoming a healthcare professional, adding to and enhancing our everyday professional values, knowledge and skills. For dentists, reflective practice is an essential part of dental training and professional development with dental undergraduate curricula creating and scaffolding opportunities for students to be reflective and develop reflective writing skills. This article describes the introduction of a reflective portfolio to the undergraduate Bachelor of Dental Science (BDS) programme at University of Bristol. This will be followed by the author sharing some personal reflections, as the faculty member overseeing the assessment of these reflective portfolios, on the first year of this initiative. Lessons learned from the exercise as well as areas for future work and improvement will also be mentioned.

Preparing dental students for independent practice: a scoping review of methods and trends in undergraduate clinical skills teaching in the UK and Ireland

“…The teaching of reflective practice is now widespread in dental schools according to the findings of this scoping review. 19,20,21 The promotion of self-direction and reflection in learning is supported by current educational theory, which proposes that adult learners actively construct understandings based on previous experiences, perceptions and knowledge, and assimilate new ideas and information in different ways and rates, often in collaboration with others. 22 Perhaps the most eagerly anticipated technological advances were virtual reality and augmented reality (VR/AR) simulators.…”

Reflections of psychomotor skill development in preclinical simulation: A qualitative analysis

“… This study only incorporated qualitative research. Future studies could extend to a mixed‐method analysis that might produce more robust findings regarding students’ self‐reflection of their skills. A significant number of students did not reflect on their experience, and perhaps due to their limited experience to draw from, 34 Wong et al (1995) reported in their study that similarly, a group of students were also non‐reflectors 35 . These were students who reported only on the superficial level of the experience and did not show elements of reflective thinking, and their writing was rather descriptive and reported on the step‐by‐step, rather than on‐action reflection of their experience and analysis.…”

Why UK dental education should take a greater interest in the behavioural and social sciences

“…An understanding of the BeSS facilitates an understanding of dental practitioners' everyday experiences and decision-making through the development of reflective practice. 23…”