Professional identity is the nurse's collection of beliefs about what it “means to be” and to “act like” a nurse. This represents his/her “philosophy of nursing” and it has a direct influence on how actual “roles and responsibilities” are followed. In other words, professional identity is the “foundational reference” in the nurse's cognitive process to which decisions are being made. Moreover, these are the values and beliefs held by the nurse as guiding principles in thinking, behaving, acting, communicating, and interacting with patients, the patient's family, and other members of the healthcare team. As a practical science, nursing education has introduced the importance of reflective learning in the clinical setting when providing care to patients and in building nurse-patient relationships. This means that there is a developing awareness of assisting, encouraging, and teaching both students and professional nurses to become thoughtful individuals, capable of critical thinking and analogy to come up with innovative ideas. Reflection in this mode of instruction is considered as a tool for the analysis of nursing practice nurturing both the understanding of professional nursing and the building of important thoughtful approaches essential for providing nursing care in multifaceted and dynamic working conditions. As a result, reflection, as an instructional method, has been included in many nursing curricula. However, the concept of reflection within the context of developing a professional identity has scarcely been defined to adequately identify research and educational indicators. This concept analysis aims to describe attributes, antecedents, and consequences of reflection in the development of professional identity in nursing and to provide clear evidence for nursing educators/faculty that support the systematic development of professional nurses as they advance in practice from the undergraduate to the graduate programs.
Reflection ; Professional Identity ; Professional Nursing