Opening minds and mouths wider: developing a model for student reflective practice within clinical placements

Critical reflection provides a bridge between university and the workplace, and in ultimately preparing work ready graduates (Patrick et al, 2008). Reflective practice is known to be widely used in work integrated learning (WIL) via journals, written and oral assessments. This paper highlights the use of reflective practice and the use of feedback through the application of a framework based on facets of employability and levels of student autonomy in work experience. The Work Skills Development Framework (WSD) monitors and assesses the proactive participation of students during their placement using different work skill facets and levels of autonomy in the workplace (Bandaranaike & Willison, 2009). This paper presents the adaptation of the WSD to the Bachelor of Oral Health (BOH) at the University of Adelaide. The BOH is a 3-year undergraduate program, where students spend between 40-60% of their contact time undertaking clinical placements. Assessment of specific, psychomotor skills has been the traditional focus of clinical placements in most health science courses – however, this approach has its limitations. The value of a more holistic approach, based on reflective practice, is well documented (Epstein et al, 2008; Tsang and Walsh, 2010; Chambers, 2009). Consequently, the WSD has been used to scaffold an assessment rubric that measures the more holistic aspects of developing the professional abilities required by all health professionals. This expanded approach to assessing BOH students during clinical placements will be implemented in 2012, and ongoing evaluation is planned to measure its effectiveness in developing reflective, highly skilled oral health practitioners