By using reflection before and during clinical incidents, as well as in hindsight, Simon Cassidy has found that the personal motives underpinning the act of caring are often laid bare

Reflection and reflective practice are said to be beneficial to nurses (NMC 2002). Reflection provides a strategy for new learning (Atkins and Murphy 1995), is a means of linking technical and intuitive knowledge (Schön 1987) and gives opportunities to examine practice constrained by institutional structures (Taylor 2001). It has also been suggested that reflection helps nurses to examine multiple roles implicit in health promoting interactions with clients (Chambers 1999). Consequently, there may be benefits in analysing clinical incidents through a combination of foresight, in situ awareness and retrospection.