Debriefing & Feedback
Chapter 1: Debriefing Process
Clinical reasoning and reflective thinking are promoted by the appropriate integration of feedback, debriefing, and/or guided reflection. The debriefing process promotes understanding, enhances learning, increases competence in clinical performance, and supports transfer of knowledge, skills, and attitudes while fostering self- confidence, awareness, and efficacy (INACSL Standards Committee, Decker, et.al., 2021).
The debriefing process includes three different strategies or techniques (feedback, debriefing, and/or guided reflection). It is important to note that no particular strategy or technique is necessarily preferential and more than one may be implemented. The type or combination of techniques (blended approach) selected depends on the level or type of participants, desired learning, and/or evaluation outcomes of the simulation-based experience (INACSL Standards Committee, Decker, et.al., 2021). The ultimate goal of the debriefing process is to promote reflective thinking.
- Feedback is a unidirectional process where “information [is] transferred between learner, facilitator, simulator, or peer(s) with the intention of improving the understanding of concepts or aspects of performance” (p. 18). Feedback can be delivered by a facilitator, a technological device, a computer, a standardized patient (or a simulated person), or by other learners as long as it is part of the learning process (INACSL Standards Committee, Decker, et.al., 2021).
- Debriefing is a bidirectional, “formal, collaborative, reflective process within the simulation learning activity” (p. 14). Debriefing encourages learners’ reflective thinking and can be integrated at designated points within a Simulation Based Educational (SBE) activity or as a post-scenario activity. A debriefing session can be divided into several phases. During the description phase, learners are reminded of the objectives of the simulation and purpose of the debriefing. The reaction/defuse phase allows learners to explore their reactions to the experience. During the analysis/discovery phase, the facilitator assists the learners’ exploration into the experiences, facilitates understanding of material, and helps identify knowledge gaps. The summary/application phase provides an opportunity to recap the experience, identify insights, and allows exploration of how the knowledge, skills, and attitudes of the experience could be transferred to the actual patient care environment (INACSL Standards Committee, Decker, et.al., 2021).
- Guided reflection is a process by which facilitators encourage learners to explore the critical elements of an experience in an effort to gain understanding and insight. Guided reflection, an intellectual and affective activity, promotes the linkage of theory with practice and research. Guided reflection can be integrated into a debriefing or be accomplished through an exercise following the SBE event such as journaling and open discussions (INACSL Standards Committee, Decker, et.al., 2021).
