NWT RESEARCH DATABASE

Regions: North Slave Region

Tags: social sciences, nursing

Objective(s): To collect reflective writing assignments from Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students to identify themes from practice experiences, and to identify what influences and informs BSN students choice of reflective topic or theme, also to explore student's understanding of the reflective process and its relevance to nursing practice and curriculum.

Project Description: This licence has been issued for the scientific research application No.5134. The objectives of the original study were: 1) to collect reflective writing assignments from Bachelor of Science in Nursing (BSN) students to identify themes from practice experiences; 2) to identify what influences and informs BSN students choice of reflective topic or theme; and 3) to explore student's understanding of the reflective process and its relevance to nursing practice and curriculum. The objective of this phase is to hold focus groups with BSN students to understand how they engage with the reflective writing process; how they decide what to write about; the experiences that shape their decisions regarding reflective writing; and the type of supports they need to be reflective writers. All BSN students will be invited to attend focus groups to answer the following questions: 1. What does reflective writing mean to you? 2. How do you choose the topic of your reflective writing? 3. What factors influenced your decision in choosing your topic? 4. Was there a specific process or tool that you used to write your reflection? 5. How does writing reflections impact your nursing practice? An email will be sent to all students by a member of the research team. They will be informed in this email that this is a research project and they are under no obligation to attend. There will be two focus group options for students in years 2, 3 and 4 in February. There will be two focus group options for students in year 1 in April, as they do not learn the RPN process until the winter semester. Students will be asked to come to a specific room at a specific time for the meeting. One team member will ask questions and one will take notes on flip chart, in order to validate responses. Once the focus groups are complete, themes will be identified from the notes by the research team. Findings from this study will be shared with BSN students at the annual student-faculty research day. If findings are made to the overall RPN process as a result of findings from this study, students will be informed as part of their BSN orientation and/or practice course introduction at the beginning of the academic year. The fieldwork for this study will be conducted from February 22, 2022 to April 29, 2022