Example Reflective Account: Patient Dignity (Code Section 1)

What follows is a complete worked example of a Form 6 reflective account on Code Section 1 (treat people as individuals). It’s anonymised. It’s not based on a single real case but on the patterns audit auditors see in strong submissions.

The intent: show what the four fields look like when written well. Use this as a model for your own reflection on your own practice. Do not copy.

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Form 6: Reflective Account 1 of 5

Date completed: March 2025 Date of event: December 2024

Field 1: What was the nature of the CPD activity, practice-related feedback, or event in your practice?

During an early shift on an acute medical ward in December 2024, I was caring for a woman in her 80s who had been admitted overnight with a chest infection. During the morning wash, the patient became distressed because the curtains had not been fully pulled and a male healthcare assistant was visible to her at the next bay. She asked me to wait until he had left the area before she would let me continue. She used the phrase “I just want to be a person, not a job.”

The patient settled once we were genuinely private. She had also been receiving care under a different nurse the previous evening when, she told me, a similar situation had arisen and the nurse had said “it’s fine, no one can see you really”. The patient had felt she couldn’t object further at that point.

Field 2: What did you learn from the CPD activity, feedback or event?

What I learned was that I had been using curtain closure as a binary check — drawn or undrawn — when the patient’s experience was more granular than that. A curtain pulled to the post but not overlapping with the next bay’s curtain creates a visible gap of three or four inches from certain angles. From the patient’s bed, that gap may or may not be observable depending on head position. From outside the bay, particularly the position of the male HCA at the next bed, the gap had been clear.

The wider insight was that my standard for “private enough” had been calibrated to the bed I was working at, not to the surrounding bays. Dignity in a shared ward is not just about my bay; it’s about every adjacent space where the patient might be observed during personal care. The patient’s phrasing — “a person, not a job” — also identified that staff language matters as much as physical privacy. The previous nurse’s reassurance had been dismissive, and that had affected the patient’s confidence to raise the issue with me initially.

Field 3: How did you change or improve your practice as a result?

Since the event, I have changed two specific things about how I prepare for personal care.

First, I now physically walk around the bay before drawing the curtain to check the line of sight from each adjacent position. I close any gaps where the curtain overlaps imperfectly. The check adds maybe 30 seconds.

Second, I now explicitly ask the patient before personal care: “Is this private enough for you?” rather than asking only about pain, temperature or other comfort issues. The question gives them permission to raise privacy without having to assert themselves against the staff.

Both habits have held since December. I noticed in February that I caught a small curtain gap behind a patient that I would previously have missed; the walking-around-the-bay check works. I have also had two patients say the explicit privacy question made them feel respected.

Field 4: How is this relevant to The Code?

Code Section 1: Treat people as individuals and uphold their dignity.

Sub-clause 1.2 requires delivering the fundamentals of care effectively, including dignity. The walking-around-the-bay check operationalises that requirement at the level of the physical environment rather than just the bedside. The explicit privacy question addresses sub-clause 1.1 (treat people with kindness and compassion) by giving the patient agency rather than relying on them to assert themselves.

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Why this example works

Four features make this Form 6 entry pass audit cleanly:

Specificity in Field 1. A specific event, a specific quote from the patient, an anonymised but concrete setting. The auditor can picture what happened.

A real insight in Field 2. The learning isn’t “I learned the importance of dignity”. It’s a specific shift in how the registrant calibrates privacy: from binary (drawn/undrawn) to granular (line-of-sight checks across the bay).

Concrete behaviour change in Field 3. Two specific changes, both observable, both with evidence they have stuck.

A connection sentence in Field 4 that quotes the relevant sub-clause and explains how the behaviour change addresses it.

Where this could fall short

If the audit were to query the account, the question most likely to come up is: was the previous nurse’s behaviour also reported through any other route? Section 5.5 (sharing information that supports learning) and Section 16 (raising concerns about a colleague’s practice) might apply. A defensible answer: the patient’s account was raised informally with the ward sister, and a team reminder about privacy practices followed at the next safety huddle.

If you write a reflection that touches another colleague’s practice, be ready to articulate what (if anything) you did with that information beyond the personal reflection.

The next chapter contains the second worked example: a reflective account on Code Section 18 (medicines administration) covering a near-miss drug calculation incident.