Using blogging to engage nursing students in reflective practice

Blogging is a practice that educators in creative and professional writing, journalism, communication and a variety of other writing-based programs utilise to enhance their students’ reflective writing, alongside other skills. This article suggests that this practice may be useful in other non-writing based disciplines, in this case the discipline of nursing, where reflective practice has been identified as a framework to assist in developing personal growth, problem solving and the identification of innate strengths, allowing professional maturation in difficult environments. It describes the use of blogging in an assessment item in a final year undergraduate nursing unit. Analysis of students’ blogs revealed blogging was cathartic and triggered reflection and transformation.