Knowledge, Attitude and Practices of Reflective Writing Among Physiotherapy Academicians: A Cross-Sectional Study

Background: Reflection has been defined as an active process of reviewing, analysing and evaluating experiences to inform future actions. Enhancing reflective thinking in students is known to improve their critical thinking, problem solving ability, clinical reasoning, making them selfdirected learners thereby leading to their overall professional development. Present study aimed to explore the knowledge, attitude and practices of Physiotherapy academicians about reflective writing. Methods: This cross-sectional study was conducted on 110 Physiotherapy academicians with minimum 1 year of teaching experience affiliated to a state health science university. Aself-validated questionnaire consisting of knowledge, attitude, practice domain was developed and validated by a panel of eight experts. Final tool was circulated among participants using Google form and the data recorded was analysed using descriptive statistics. Results: Data collected for 110 participants revealed that almost 39.09% (n=43) were aware of the concept of reflection but only 11.8%(n=13) participants were familiar with the theories of reflections. Majority showed favourable attitude towards the use of reflection in improving student engagement (93.63%, n=103), problem-solving ability (85.45%, n=94) and making them self-directed learners (93.63%, n=103). Very few participants (11.63%, n=13) practiced implementing reflective writing. Majority of them (94.54%, n=104) had not taken any formal training in reflections. Conclusion: Though Physiotherapy academicians had favourable attitude regarding benefits of reflective writing, they didn't have adequate knowledge about reflections and they hardly practiced it.