Time to review reflective practice?

BACKGROUND: Reflective practice is an integral part of modern healthcare. If done well, it can significantly improve the individual skills of health care practitioners. However, we hypothesize that extrapolating individual reflective practice into broader organization applications undermines its fundamental nature and inhibits objective benchmarking within the health sector. METHODS: We reflect on the nature and use of the reflective practice in healthcare. RESULTS: An organization that practices reflective practice may, in effect, create an environment where reflective practice is promoted but operates to homogenize thinking to a point where it turns into dysfunctional institutional navel-gazing. Homogenized thinking may inhibit the ability to move beyond practice to explore ideas that lead to change. CONCLUSIONS: The collective approach to reflective practice can subvert the underlying process of self-analysis, which allows the critical examination of individual values, priorities, and evaluations. It can inhibit individual growth, favouring a homogenizing effect which is the antithesis of an innovative organization when measured against the original intent and must therefore be used with care.