THE VALUE OF CRITICAL INCIDENT ANALYSIS AS AN EDUCATIONAL-TOOL AND ITS RELATIONSHIP TO EXPERIENTIAL LEARNING

Experiential learning and teaching strategies designed to facilitate t his, have become popular in nursing and midwifery education in recent years. It is advocated that such learning enables the development of k nowledge, skills and attitudes grounded in practice through the use of reflection on action, One strategy that may be utilised by nursing/mi dwifery educators to develop reflective ability in both themselves and students is critical incident analysis, It is suggested that critical incident analysis has value and is appropriate for developing interpe rsonal skills and self-awareness. It is proposed that critical inciden t analysis is a valuable educational tool which enables nursing/midwif ery students to draw on past experiences and make sense of them, not o nly facilitating learning from clinical practice but also going some w ay towards bridging the gap between theory and practice.