Reflective practice - keeping a practice diary

What is reflective practice?

Reflective Practice is the term given for something that many of us do every day without even realising that we are doing it! By recording what and how you have learnt from your experience in a step-by-step fashion you can earn 5 CPD points. It’s similar to keeping a private diary and requires you to be completely honest with yourself. You can use it to record a positive experience or a difficult one. There is no one correct  way to do this but we have outlined a simple step-by-step guide below for you to expand as you use it more:

Step 1 - Start by looking back at a treatment you gave that was particularly successful or unsuccessful and ask yourself a few questions. What was the treatment? What did the client do and say that was significant and sticks in your mind? What did you do and say that was significant? How did they react? How did you react?

Step 2 - Then reflect deeply about what happened, why and how it happened. How did you feel about it? What was the most important issue that it raised for you?

Step 3 - Think about what possible alternatives there were that you could have tried. What could you have done differently (if anything)?

Step 4 - Evaluate the treatment itself – what was the outcome?

Step 5 - How have you learnt from this experience? What would you do differently in the future? Do you feel more motivated for the future or less? Are there other approaches you would try in the future?

Step 6 - Having written all this down, file it in your CPD folder, making a note of your allocated 5 points on a summary sheet.

Shirley Price Aromatherapy Diploma and CPD events