MM307 - Is Reflective Journaling for AuD Students Worthwhile?

Abstract: Reflective practice has been widely documented as a tool to aid in decision-making, help understand difficult concepts, and as an emotional outlet. Current clinical preceptor training suggests we encourage students to use reflection to develop critical thinking skills and take ownership of their educational experience. A wide body of literature exists on reflective practice among students in other health professions, such as nursing, but there is minimal research regarding audiology students. We evaluated how various factors such as age, program level, training in reflective practice, and frequency of using reflective practice relate to attitudes and perceptions about learning in audiology.

Summary:
Reflective journaling is the practice of documenting one’s thoughts, feelings, and experiences to gain insight and self-awareness. The act of reflecting on past events can help understand oneself better, identify patterns or recurring themes, and make meaning out of experiences.

Reflective journaling can be used in a wide variety of settings and has been implemented as a tool for students in various education programs. It has even been encouraged and applied in clinical preceptor training. Clinically, looking back at previous patient encounters can help to identify strengths, and weaknesses, and help to formulate specific goals. Instead of students solely receiving feedback from an outside observer, such as a teacher or preceptor, journaling requires them to be an active participant in the educational process. It forces them to revisit not only situations that went well but situations that they may have struggled in. While there is extensive literature regarding reflective practice with students in other health fields, limited research is available regarding its use in audiology.

The current study is multifaceted, including a survey of healthcare professional students' attitudes towards reflective practices, in addition to a qualitative evaluation of our own students’ reflection journals. We evaluated how various factors such as age, program level, training in reflective practice, and frequency of using reflective practice relate to attitudes and perceptions about learning in audiology. The benefits and challenges of using reflective journaling will be discussed so that clinical preceptors can critically evaluate whether they wish to use reflective journaling with their own students.  

The Scale of Reflection in Learning Survey (Sorboral, 2005) has been used for over twenty years for medical students to evaluate self-appraisal of early learning experiences and is valid and reliable. The wording of this survey was modified to make it more applicable to a range of healthcare professional programs as it was originally written for medical students only. Additionally, demographic information and questions regarding reflective journaling experience were included in the survey. The survey was then published and promoted to a wide variety of students across various healthcare professions, including audiology. As of now, about 25 students in audiology educational programs from across the United States have completed the survey.

Preliminary analysis of the results included a comparison of survey responses across several demographic variables including frequency of the use of reflective journaling. No significant trends were found between the amount of training in reflective practice or the frequency of reflective journaling and any of the self-rating scales. In addition, no significant correlation was seen between any demographic information and the self-rating scales.

Although previous literature supports the use of reflective practice in higher education, its overall impact on student’s perceptions of their learning capabilities may be limited. Findings suggest that there is no difference in perception of learning abilities whether they participate in reflective journaling or not. This information should be considered when deciding whether to make reflective journaling a requirement of an educational program as it may not be an effective teaching method.