Teaching Reflective Social Work Practice in Health Care: Promoting Best Practices

Reflection on case material is traditionally believed to promote better clinical practice; recent neurobiological understandings explain why reflection consolidates learning and allows professional heuristics to develop. Here, we describe a practice in context (PIC) framework that requires reflection on the contextual and decisional aspects of a case and further reflection on potential changes for use in similar cases in the future. We analyze cases using the PIC framework to identify themes related to the use of self to identify potential best practices. The framework is shown to function to promote reflection at all levels of practice; published cases provide "role-modeling" for students, while also creating data for analysis of best practices.