More thoughts for practice

In an article I found that postulated that about how much experience really mattered in reflective practice actually cited an interesting study that had a conclusion about experienced RN's decision making vs a "novice" RN's decision making. They found in this small study that experience did not make one more reflective in their thinking about solutions but actually the experienced RN made as many mistakes in the solution as the novice RN. We in nursing talk a lot about the unspoken knowledge we have from years of experience and how difficult it is to convey to our students; this finding makes me wonder if indeed we fall back on a "cookbook" approach to conclusions more often that we think we do. Teri G

Kinsella articles

Elizabeth Kinsella in her two articles on Schon's Reflective Practice arrives at several conclusions that work for me in applying this pretty ethereal concept in practice. Much of professional practice done by a person who has worked in the field for a long time is "tacit" knowledge; this unspoken action that has substance underlying it is the most difficult thing to relay to students. In nursing we have used the term "informed intuition" which of course makes my students roll their eyes and sigh deeply but now I feel I have something to support that statement with.