GUIDELINES FOR CLINICAL JOURNALING

GUIDELINES FOR CLINICAL JOURNALING Journalling Template In your entries attempt to: • Analyse your own performance, be honest with yourself • Evaluate your gains in understanding and completing tasks • Verbalize how you feel about your learning • Make connections with theory learned in class and labs • Demonstrate transfer of learning from class/lab to clinical • Integrate the concepts taught in other courses, i.e. Pharmacology, Counselling What?, So What?, Now What? What? – Describe briefly but objectively what happened in clinical. • Answer the question, “What did I do, read, see, hear etc? So What? – Interpret the events • Explain what you saw and heard; • Your new insights; • Your connections with class/lab learning, your feelings etc; • Your hypotheses, if any; your conclusions • Answer the question what might this mean? What was the reason I did this nursing action? What was the result? Was the result the same as I anticipated? Now What? – Evaluate the effectiveness of what was observed/learned and done • Make judgements clearly connected to observations made. Be honest, use constructive criticism with yourself. • Evaluation answers the question, “What is my opinion about what I observed or experienced? Why? • Plan how this information will be useful to you o What are your recommendations? (Be concrete) Consider how this learning experience can help you in the future?