Developing reflective practice: A guide for students and practitioners of health and social care,Natius Oelofsen

Reviewed by: Isabel Martin, Independent Practice Teacher, Scotland

The body of literature regarding reflective and reflexive practice in health and social care has grown over a number of years and capacity to reflect is now embedded in professional training and post-professional registration learning. An accessible publication like this is therefore very attractive given the pressures we all experience in keeping up to date.

The style is intriguing as its author, consultant clinical psychologist Dr Natius Oelofson, has managed to capture the jargon free essence of the theories, practices and ethics surrounding reflective practice, while ensuring the reader keeps in mind the user of their services. I enjoyed how the author has repeatedly supported the reader to reflect upon their organisational context and how what can be daunting complex issues have been distilled into an accessible text, without loss of the powerful message that reflective practice supports safe, ethical service delivery and a vehicle for transformational change.

‘Developing Reflective Practice’ unashamedly beams psychoanalytical concepts onto the many facets of service delivery linking personal and occupational issues to the wider organisational context. If you are looking for sociopolitical debate you will not find it here, but the readers are repeatedly led to consider their place in that context of service delivery. If you believe that psychoanalytical thinking is outdated, not for you, or irrelevant in post-modern approaches to our work, think again. As claimed in its introduction the author targets a wide readership of students and practitioners from the spectrum of services by not being profession specific. He draws together the complex common threads and offered a structured and concise exploration of the concepts with a range of practical exercises for use individually or as a group.

The publication is very well presented and uses a now tried and tested format of narrative, theory, models of practice, developmental exercises and illustrative case examples. The result is a creatively concise analysis of the many facets of reflective practice with pointers towards further reading.

Dr Oelofsen introduces his model of a “Three-Step (CLT) Reflective Cycle” which he frames as “Curiosity”, “Looking Closer” and “ Transformation”. This model recurs throughout the sections on reflection on work, emotion and staff support in frontline services. There is sufficient referencing to remind the reader that the expressed opinions are not all Dr Oelofson’s, as his style of addressing the reader conveys the sense of a personal tutorial.

The helpful introduction in Part One to psychoanalytical concepts in reflection immediately offers lots of helpful tools and then encourages the reader to examine perspectives on the ideological, political and societal influences on service delivery.

I was initially surprised by the beginning to Part Two where the role of narratives in frontline services is offered but this develops into a skilful refocusing on the service user’s experience of the practitioner and the service itself.

Part Three follows themes which should be familiar to social work practitioners, but maybe not so familiar to some others providing health and social care. It explores many facets of the emotional component of the work undertaken in frontline services and the interface between self and service.

Section Four should be valuable to all of us who engage in supervision as it provides reflections and tools for reducing and managing stress without pathologising the individual. By continuing the theme that recurs throughout the publication concerning the place of the individual in an organisational context, the role of reflection in our work becomes a collective responsibility. As a practitioner whose early training was embedded in psychoanalytical concepts, later to be discarded, then cautiously reclaimed, I enjoyed how these concepts have been applied to our contemporary experience and the author’s closing assertion that a critical mass of reflective practitioners can become a collective force for change.

Many of the concepts and exercises may be familiar to social work staff, but this is a really valuable companion handbook whether you are a stressed manager who has drifted away from psychological mindedness, a line manager looking for inspiration to motivate staff during tough times, a ‘stuck’ social work practitioner, a student wrestling with daunting theoretical concepts, or a practice educator seeking to refresh their approach to developing reflection in others. It is an excellent introduction for staff who are starting out their exploration of reflective practice.

As the social work profession increasingly joins with its’ companion professions, this concise and creative publication will be invaluable in integrated settings to support safe and ethical service provision in health and social care.