Building emotional resilience to foster well-being by utilising reflective practise in the sonography workplace

Reflection and reflective practise are well recognised tools that are utilised by healthcare professionals to support self-awareness and self-care. In turn, self-care is a critical component of the wellbeing and the capacity for resilience of healthcare professionals in response to day-to-day exposure to emotionally and psychologically challenging situations. Affective reflection, the process of considering and analysing thoughts, feelings and emotions though written dialogue (the act of reflective writing), has been shown to be beneficial for promoting and building resilience in healthcare professionals. Despite the known benefits of these strategies for maintaining wellbeing and avoiding compassion fatigue and burnout, the discourse on the use of affective reflection and reflective writing in the sonography profession is limited. Interventions such as reflection, reflective practise and reflective writing should not be underestimated as tools to promote the adaptive abilities and the degree of individual emotional resilience of sonographers. Long term positive outcomes supported by utilising and practising reflection include the maintenance of emotional stability and an increase in the scope for empathy and subsequently, an enhancement of quality of practise and patient care. This article aims to provide a broad discussion on the practise of affective reflection and showcase the process of reflective writing using written reflective dialogue guides with practical examples relevant to sonography practise. In addition, this paper outlines how these strategies can be incorporated and enacted in the sonography workplace to build resilience.