Making it “More Real”: Using Personal Narrative in Faculty Feedback to a Medical Student’s Reflective Writing – An Illustrative Exemplar

Abstract

Reflective capacity is an essential characteristic of professionally competent clinical practice. Use of interactive reflective writing (IRW), ie. student writer/faculty feedback provider dyad and/or collaborative reflection in small group, to augment reflective practice instruction is well documented. IRW-enhanced reflection on experience contributes to meaning-making, leading to transformative learning within professional identity formation. Written formative feedback to trainees' reflective writings can include personal anecdotes from faculty to enrich the educational value of feedback, used judiciously and subjected to a "filtering" process. We provide an exemplar of a third year Family Medicine clerkship student's reflective writing about a clinical care experience that "mattered" as well as the faculty written feedback which included sharing a personal narrative resonating with themes emerging from the student's reflective writing. Dual, mutually reinforcing identities/roles of medical educator and family cancer caregiver as educator emerged within the feedback. We include some post-IRW exercise student and educator reflections on the experience and impact of such sharing within an educational context. In this example, faculty drawing from both personal and professional experience to craft feedback supporting the becoming of a physician was experienced by the student writer as making the feedback more "real" and engaging, leading to perceived enhanced value of the educational exercise.

Keywords

• interactive reflective writing
• reflective practice
• professional identity formation
• medical humanities
• professionalism
• resilience