Reflecting on clinical practice: hectoring talk or reality?

Reflection can be seen as a useful tool to enable the practitioner to explore the everyday world of clinical practice. This paper reviews the background to reflection and its relevance to nursing in reducing the theory--practice gap and its role in generating theory from practice. Exemplars from clinical practice are reflected upon and Carper's (1978) 'Patterns of Knowing' are used as a framework to identify nursing knowledge embedded in practice. The process of reflection is critically discussed in the light of the author's experience.