Professional Development Plan and Reflective Analysis in Health & Social Care

Assessment 1: You are required to prepare and review a professional development plan.

In so doing you should:

Evaluate own knowledge against standards and benchmarks.
Create SMART goals and targets for own professional development.
Determine appropriate goals and targets to meet expected standards.
Assess learning opportunities to meet objectives and reflect personal learning style.
Apply techniques to review progress toward personal and professional objectives

You can refer to the NHS website – or other alternative sources for guidance on developing and producing a personal development plan.

Assessment 2: Undertake a critical reflection of own practice within a health and social care environment.

In your reflective account you should:
Evaluate the effectiveness of own reflective practice
Explain what is meant by professional development.
Explain ways of overcoming barriers to professional development.
Determine the different sources available for professional development.
Analyse factors to consider when selecting opportunities and activities for keeping knowledge and practice up to date.
Compare models of reflective practice
Describe how you would apply reflective practice techniques to improve own performance.

Assessment 3: Part A: Explain the principles of academic writing.

Part B: Submit a piece of your own writing. The writing may have been produced as evidence for another unit, but must be in an appropriate format and style, following conventions of academic writing.

Part C: Apply techniques to review on own academic writing skills.

Expert Answer on Above Professional Development Plan

Professional development plan

An analysis of my own knowledge against standards and benchmarks: With respect to my current knowledge, I feel that it is in best Alliance with nHS knowledge and Skills Framework Requirements concerning communication, safeguarding and person centred care. However there is still good scope of further development in respect to evidence based care.
Smart goals: My goal has been to successfully pass out an NHS approved safeguarding adults reflection course within a period of 4 month with at least 60% marks.
Goals and targets to meet standard: It is important for me to ensure complete compliance with regulatory requirements, enhance service quality and professional competence in accordance with NHS standards.
Learning opportunities: I believe that I will get significant opportunities of learning in terms of e-learning modules, reflective journals as I am highly good at reading text to enhance my learning.
Monitoring progress: I will make sure to monitor my progress by using reflective logs and taking feedback from peers.

Critical reflection of own practice

Benefits of reflective practice: Reflective practice is highly beneficial for me in terms of enhancing my clinical decision making, professional judgement and making a clear assessment of my strength and limitations in practice.
Overcoming barriers: The barriers in the form of workload pressures and time constraint can be effectively dealt with through structured CPD planning and flexible learning approaches.
Professional development sources: The sources available to me are the NHS training program, workplace supervision and academic courses.
Selecting development opportunities: While selecting the development opportunities, the factors that will be considered are its relevance to role and alignment with professional standards.
Reflective practice models: Gibbs reflective cycle is a systematic approach whereas the model by Schon requires adequate importance on reflection during and after practice. The Kolb model of reflection is good at combining experiential learning.
Improving performance through reflective practice: I will try to improve my performance through reflective practice such as evaluating incidents so that I can inform future professional actions.

Principles of academic writing

The most common principle of academic writing is that the write-up should be properly structured, evidence based, critical and properly referenced using academic scholarly articles.
Own academic writing: With respect to my own academic writing, I utilise formal tone while writing academic tasks and always believe in analysing the text critically rather than simply describing it, and I take utmost attention in writing my own words rather than copying from some other sources.

This model answer is reviewed by Annie Marvin, having expertise in personal care support and patient monitoring.
Disclaimer: This answer is a model for study and reference purposes only. Use it for your learning to do your assignment on your own. Please do not submit it as your own work.

Do You Need Full Answer With References?

Writing a reflective report involving professional development plan needs you to be self aware about your own skills and areas of interest, and your ability to set measurable goals. Self-reflection is crucial which is sometimes challenging, and this is where professional healthcare management experts can guide you properly to complete your developmental plan and reflective analysis.