Rapid review: Reflective Practice in crisis situations

Reflective practice is what we do when we take some time to think critically about an experience or an event we have been involved in. This means that we look carefully at what happened, what we did, what we might have done differently, what we could have controlled, what was beyond our control and also we explore how other people experienced the same event.
In-depth reflection may enable the practitioner to gain useful insights into their expectations about how patients should behave, the nature of illness and the roles and responses of health professionals. Little is known about the impact and effectiveness of reflective practice in crisis situations. We reviewed the published literature and present two recommendations that are of relevance to the current Covid-19 crisis.
1) There are things we can do now: The importance right now of ensuring that staff have both time and a safe space in which they can reflect on their experiences either with fellow staff or via peer- facilitated reflections. That way those staff who wish to, could be supported to reflect on and process their after a difficult shift.
2) There are things we can think about in the mid to longer term: the importance of organisations learning from the pandemic. Post pandemic, perhaps developing simulations, but also formally engaging in structured reflective practice to ensure practical skills are honed and lessons learned and b) paying attention to the organisational culture and ensuring that reflective practice is embedded as ‘business as usual'.