Reflective practice: the essential competency for health systems and healthcare practitioners during the COVID-19 pandemic

ABSTRACT

For health systems, COVID-19 has been one of the most challenging events of the twenty-first Century requiring timely change to practices and standard operating procedures. Though pandemics have been declared in the past, the resultant public health implications of the novel virus are which no currently practising healthcare practitioner has previously experienced professionally. As such, health systems have had to rapidly adapt to changes to how health services are delivered. This article demonstrates and highlights the value of how reflective practices can be used by health systems and healthcare practitioners to create and manage meaningful change during a pandemic situation.

KEYWORDS:

• COVID-19
• reflection
• health services
• health practitioner
• medical education

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Correction Statement

This article has been republished with minor changes. These changes do not impact the academic content of the article.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Ramesh Walpola

Dr.Ramesh Walpola is a pharmacist and Lecturer in Health Management at the School of Population Health, UNSW Sydney. His main area of research expertise and interest is in patient and medication safety, particularly examining the social determinants of safe practices. Dr Walpola’s current research spans several areas including patient and medication safety in vulnerable populations, safety culture, health professional education and change management within health systems.

Cherie Lucas

Dr.Cherie Lucas, Senior Lecturer, pharmacist and Manager of Clinical Placements for the Master of Pharmacy degree, University of Technology Sydney, Australia. Her research expertise includes reflective practice and interprofessional education. She has led teams in developing tools, assessment strategies and curricula resources to enhance students’ reflective capacity. Dr Lucas’ work and collaboration in the area of reflective practice has been awarded two international awards: Best Full paper, International Learning Analytics and Knowledge Conference (LAK 17), Canada, 2017; Teaching Innovation Award, International Pharmacy Symposium, Italy 2017; and is the recipient of two University Teaching awards: 2018 UTS Learning and Teaching Citation honour as Project lead; 2019 Australian Award for University Teaching (AAUT) Citation- for Outstanding contribution to student learning.