Reflective essay

The reflective essay is a 3000 word document, +/- 10%, to be submitted to turnitin on BB
In order to be eligible for a first in the essay, you must have submitted reflective entries regularly ie
every week, to Blackboard, on at least five separate occasions.
Weekly journal entries can be submitted to BB to count as one of your separate entries.  As there are no lectures, or seminars to reflect upon during the Easter break,
you can submit just one during this time period.
2. Final Essay
The final essay should be your reflection on your learning from the course, from the lectures,
seminars, readings, videos and from leading a seminar, as a whole.
Look back through your reflective entries to help you with this. Some questions you may wish to
consider include:-
• Do you notice any themes – you will discuss three key topics within your essay?
• How has your learning developed across the course?
• What do you think are the key elements of leadership of wicked problems in healthcare
which have made an impression upon you? Challenged you? Frustrated you?
• What have you read which has particularly enhanced your learning?
• What type of leadership do you now think is needed within healthcare in times of crisis
and/or ‘wicked problems’?
• What are your reflections on the process of reflection?
• How might you use what you have learnt during the course, going forward?
Whereas your weekly journal has included reflections on the lecture, reading, current events,
seminar etc, your essay seeks to take a higher perspective in order to identify key themes and
conclusions, informed by your weekly reflections.
3. FAQs:
• I have written my entries on a word document and not yet submitted to BB. If I submit my
past five entries as one word doc. will that still count as 5 entries?
o Answer: No, this will count as one entry.
• Does it have to be written in an ‘academic style’?
o The essay is a mixture of personal/academic. Write in the first person, but ensure
that you concur with academic requirements by referencing in accordance with
Harvard.
• Should I provide references/citations?
o Yes, although this is a personal reflective mode of writing, it is still an academic
submission and we want to see therefore that you have carried out additional
reading and reflected upon the reading.
• Should I use a reflective model to structure my essay?
o No, because the models look at individual events and you are seeking to identify
connections in order to pull out key themes. It can be very useful to reflect on the
process of reflection however, cf below.
4. Suggested Structure
Please realise that this is suggested only. Because of the personal nature of your reflective essay
it is difficult to provide firm guidance around structure or word count allocation, but this will
hopefully give you some ideas.
a) Introduction
Provide some background/context – why is leadership in healthcare worthy of study and
worthy of study NOW? Why is it of interest to you?
Outline the structure of your essay.
b) Main Body
• Topic 1
Explain why you have chosen this topic? Why is this of particular importance when
considering leadership within healthcare and of wicked problems? What questions arose for
you when you were reflecting upon this subject? (approx.300 words)
What have you learnt about this topic? What reflections did you have and what are your
reflections now? What have you learnt from class/reading? How is this topic developing and
changing? How have you brought together the learning from your reflections/experience
and what conclusions has this enabled you to form? (400 words)
• Topic 2
You could echo the structure above for topic 1 depending on the nature of your learning.
You may have different questions/theories.
• Topic 3: as above
• Reflections on reflection: how has your view of reflection changed during the course?
What was difficult, if anything? How did you meet this challenge(s)? How useful was any
model which you used?
c) Conclusion
Pulling together your discussion on your three chosen topics what conclusion do you draw about
leadership of wicked problems and leadership within healthcare?
What have you learnt about yourself during the course? How has the process of reflection
supported you in this process? How, if at all, might you use reflection going forward