Reflective Practice Workbook

The Reflective Practice Workbook is a reflective practice log inside our student portal. It keeps all your reflections in one place, gives you six recognised templates to write them in, and checks each one against a short, rule-based checklist as you type. You can tag and search your reflections, export one or all of them, and send them to your evidence portfolio.

It suits two kinds of reflection. The first is everyday reflection for CPD, appraisal and revalidation, such as the written reflective accounts nurses and midwives prepare for NMC revalidation. The second is the more searching reflection needed after a complaint or a fitness to practise concern, where a regulator will look for insight into what went wrong and what has changed.

Access lasts 12 months, and the workbook is included free with every concern pack. See the price table on this page for buying it on its own or together with the Evidence Portfolio Builder.

As you write, a checklist beside your reflection shows six checks. It works by simple rules that look at the words you have used. There is no AI, and nothing is sent to an outside service. The checks are:

1. Each section has enough detail: every section meets its suggested word count.
2. Written in the first person: enough "I", "my" and "me" for the length of the reflection, so it reads as your own account.
3. A specific example is included: signs of concrete detail, such as a time or date reference, a number or quantity, and practical words like handover, record, prescription or audit.
4. Learning is stated: words such as learned, realised, understood or recognised.
5. An action or change is stated: phrases such as "I will", "next time", "I have since" or "action plan".
6. Impact on patients or service users is covered: mention of patients, service users, safety, dignity, trust or the public.

Two further prompts appear when needed. Deflection words, such as "they", "the system", "unfortunately", "but" or phrases like "not my fault" and "no one told me", trigger a gentle note asking whether you are describing your own part. Possible identifiers, such as a title followed by a name, a 10-digit number that looks like an NHS number, a date of birth, a postcode, a hospital number, an email address or a phone number, trigger a warning so you can remove them.

What the checklist cannot do

Because the checks are rule-based, they look at structure and wording, not at the quality of your insight. A reflection can tick every box and still be shallow, and a thoughtful reflection might miss a box because of the words it uses. Treat the checklist as a prompt to look again, not a score. The depth and honesty of what you write are up to you, and are what readers such as appraisers, case examiners and panels will notice.

Our free Reflective Statement Builder is a good place to start. It helps you write one reflective statement with prompts for your regulator, checks for identifying details and lets you print or copy the result. It keeps your text only in your browser on that device.

The workbook is for people who reflect regularly or need to build a body of reflections over time:

• it keeps many reflections, not one, in your portal account, so you can return to them from any device;
• it offers six templates rather than one structure per regulator;
• it adds the six-point checklist and the deflection prompts to the identifier check;
• it lets you tag, search, export all reflections together and send them to your portfolio.

If you only need a single statement, the free builder may be enough. To track CPD hours alongside your reflections, the free CPD and revalidation tracker works well with either.

Your reflections are stored in your own student portal account and are only read or written for you when you are signed in. You can delete a single reflection, or all of your workbook data, at any time.

Reflections should never identify a patient or service user. Leave out names, dates of birth, NHS or hospital numbers, addresses and postcodes, and describe people by role, such as "an older patient on the ward". The identifier warning helps, but it only spots common patterns, so read your reflection through before you share it.