Reflective practice and resident doctors

Reflective practice has evolved over the years from being an informal subconscious process to a deliberate and formal one. Residency training programs are avenues for preparing residents for a lifetime of specialist practice, and reflective practice is being incorporated into the curriculum of the program in many parts of the world. There is no universal template for carrying out reflective practice; however, there appear to be accruable benefits to residents who can surmount the barriers and undergo some form of reflection using any of the available models. This article seeks to appraise reflective practice and the inherent benefits to the resident doctor and his practice. Thus, it makes a case for incorporating reflection into the curriculum of residency training programs in Sub-Saharan Africa. It also demonstrates the need to ensure standardized, reproducible methods of reflection globally.