Reflective Diaries: An Impactful Learning Strategy in the Undergraduate Palliative Care Learning

Reflection is a process of reviewing an experience of practice in order to describe, analyse and evaluate information. This leads to critical reflection which one can view and focus on self-experience within the context of his/her own life. Objective: The study aims to understand palliative care values with the use of reflective diary following home visit to patients who require palliative care. Method: Interview was performed during the house visit by the undergraduate medical students. This outreach house visits were supervised under community palliative care nurse. The students were required to develop a learning activity, using assessment of palliative care patients’ needs, through qualitative questionnaire. This was recorded in the reflective diary upon return of such activity. The questions asked covered explorative learning and holistic medical tasks such as the impact of patient’s life from emotional, psychosocial, medical and spiritual perspective. Guided questioning was done to avoid unnecessary communication issues that may aggravate emotional distress. Students were asked to probe using vetted and agreed questions, and explore multidimensional issues in relation to culturally naïve Kelantanese population. Result: Enjoyful learning experience was recorded. The reality of dealing with patients with chronic disease has put forth a positive intention to perform better as future doctors. Conclusion: Reflective diary is an effective tool in community palliative care learning. It documents patients’ plight and students’ sense of responsibility to community. This has invaluable and indirect learning impact as part of the students’ soft skills development.