Learning to see the other: a vehicle of reflection.

A contemporary challenge for nursing educators is to connect theory with practice for nursing students in a curriculum which is largely theory based. The use of reflective writing has been widely used to increase students' critical thinking, and writing skills, as well as to help students integrate concepts within the context of clinical nursing. In the clinical context, the concept of seeing the other can be challenging for students whose life experiences may not have included many of the crises faced by patients and their families. This paper embeds an undergraduate nursing student's reflective writing response to an exercise, from a family nursing course, utilized to help students relate more confidently to the patient as the other.