Gibbs Reflective Cycle:
Full Guide with Nursing Examples
The most comprehensive guide to Gibbs Reflective Cycle for nursing students and practitioners — all six stages explained in depth, real clinical nursing examples at every step, reflective essay writing strategies, comparison with other reflection models, and expert guidance for producing assignments that earn top marks.
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Get Reflection Help →What Is the Gibbs Reflective Cycle? Definition, Origin, and Core Purpose
The Gibbs Reflective Cycle is a structured six-stage framework for reflection developed by Professor Graham Gibbs and first published in his 1988 text Learning by Doing: A Guide to Teaching and Learning Methods. The model guides practitioners through a systematic, cyclical process of examining a significant experience — moving from objective description through emotional acknowledgement, balanced evaluation, theoretical analysis, clear conclusions, and concrete action planning. In nursing, it is the most widely adopted formal model of reflective practice, used for clinical portfolios, revalidation accounts, academic reflective assignments, and professional development journals. The model’s cyclical structure reflects the reality that good reflection does not end with a single pass through the experience — it feeds forward into the next clinical encounter, making each cycle a building block of professional development.
If you are a nursing student who has just been told your next assignment must use “Gibbs Reflective Cycle,” you are in good company — and in need of a guide that goes well beyond a simple six-bullet summary of the stages. Understanding Gibbs at the level required to produce genuinely strong reflective writing in nursing requires grasping not just what each stage is called, but what analytical work each stage is supposed to accomplish, what questions it requires you to answer, and what a substantive, credit-worthy response at each stage actually looks like in clinical practice.
Graham Gibbs built the reflective cycle on the experiential learning theory of David Kolb, whose four-stage learning cycle (Concrete Experience → Reflective Observation → Abstract Conceptualization → Active Experimentation) had established the foundational principle that genuine learning from experience requires deliberate, structured reflection. Gibbs expanded and operationalized Kolb’s model specifically for professional practice contexts — making it more accessible to practitioners who needed a framework they could apply directly to real clinical situations without requiring deep familiarity with learning theory. The result was a model that has endured for nearly four decades because it works: it takes a complex, often emotionally charged clinical experience and breaks the reflective process into manageable, analytically distinct stages that produce real insight when applied faithfully.
The six stages of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle are: Description (what happened?), Feelings (what were you thinking and feeling?), Evaluation (what was good and bad about the experience?), Analysis (what sense can you make of the situation?), Conclusion (what else could you have done?), and Action Plan (if it arose again, what would you do?). Each stage serves a distinct analytical purpose, and each stage’s quality is dependent on the quality of the stages that precede it. Weak description produces weak analysis. Ignored feelings produce incomplete evaluation. Shallow analysis produces generic action plans. The model works as an integrated whole — not as a menu of optional components.
Why “Reflective Cycle” and Not “Reflective Model”?
Gibbs deliberately named his framework a cycle rather than a model or framework because the cyclical structure is conceptually essential, not cosmetic. After completing the action plan stage for one experience, the nurse takes those planned behaviors into future clinical encounters — which themselves become new experiences to reflect upon. Each completed cycle feeds into the next, creating a continuous, ascending spiral of professional learning rather than a linear, one-time process. This is why the Gibbs cycle is often depicted as a circle with an arrow completing and re-beginning rather than a straight line with a definitive endpoint. In nursing practice, this cyclical nature aligns directly with the profession’s understanding of lifelong learning and continuous professional development as non-negotiable components of safe, high-quality care. For academic writing support on reflective nursing assignments, see our nursing reflection paper service.
Description
What happened? Objective account of the experience
Feelings
What were you thinking and feeling at the time?
Evaluation
What was good and bad about the experience?
Analysis
What sense can you make of the situation?
Conclusion
What else could you have done differently?
Action Plan
What will you do differently next time?
Why Nurses Use the Gibbs Reflective Cycle: Professional, Regulatory, and Educational Rationale
Reflective practice in nursing is not a voluntary intellectual exercise or an academic convention imported from education theory. It is a professional obligation with direct implications for patient safety, care quality, and practitioner wellbeing. The Nursing and Midwifery Council (NMC) — the regulatory body governing nursing and midwifery practice in the United Kingdom — mandates reflective practice as a component of nurse revalidation, requiring practitioners to produce five written reflective accounts per three-year revalidation period demonstrating how their reflection on practice, feedback, or continuing professional development has influenced their care delivery. In the United States, the American Nurses Association (ANA) similarly recognizes reflective practice as an essential competency of professional nursing, embedded within the ANA’s Nursing: Scope and Standards of Practice.
But beyond regulatory requirement, reflective practice serves functions in nursing that are clinically and humanly essential. Nursing is a profession in which practitioners regularly encounter experiences that are cognitively complex, emotionally demanding, ethically ambiguous, and sometimes genuinely traumatic — difficult patient deaths, ethical dilemmas, medication errors, communication breakdowns, patient aggression, and the sustained exposure to human suffering that characterizes acute care nursing. Without structured reflection, these experiences accumulate unprocessed — contributing to compassion fatigue, burnout, and the gradual erosion of clinical effectiveness that affects nurses who have not developed the professional tools to make meaning from their clinical experience systematically.
The Gibbs Reflective Cycle is particularly well-suited to nursing because of three specific features that distinguish it from other reflection models. First, its explicit feelings stage gives nurses permission and structure to engage with the emotional dimensions of clinical experience — something that nursing culture has historically undervalued but that research on healthcare worker wellbeing increasingly identifies as essential. Second, its action plan stage is explicitly practice-oriented, ensuring that reflection produces not just insight but behavioral change — the most direct link between reflection and improved patient care. Third, its accessibility — the six stages are concrete, sequentially clear, and applicable to a wide range of clinical scenarios — makes it usable by practitioners at all levels, from student nurses beginning their first clinical placements to experienced charge nurses with decades of practice.
Reflective practice is not about dwelling on what went wrong. It is about transforming experience — including difficult experience — into professional wisdom that makes you a safer, more compassionate, and more effective practitioner.
— Adapted from NMC Guidance on Reflective Practice, 2019In nursing education specifically, the Gibbs Reflective Cycle is used because it scaffolds the development of clinical reasoning in ways that complement but differ from traditional academic knowledge acquisition. A student nurse who can describe the pathophysiology of heart failure in clinical detail has knowledge. A student nurse who can apply the Gibbs cycle to a heart failure patient interaction — examining what happened, what they felt, what worked and what did not, why the situation unfolded as it did, what they would do differently, and how they will develop — is developing the clinical wisdom that knowledge alone cannot produce. This distinction between knowledge and wisdom, between competence and expertise, is precisely the developmental territory that reflective practice inhabits, and it is why nursing education at undergraduate and postgraduate levels consistently uses frameworks like Gibbs to assess it.
Reflection on Practice, CPD, and Feedback: The Three Types for NMC Revalidation
For nurses completing NMC revalidation, the five required reflective accounts must cover one or more of three areas: reflection on practice (a specific clinical experience that prompted learning), continuing professional development (CPD) (learning from a course, training, or educational activity), and feedback (reflection on feedback received from patients, carers, or colleagues). The Gibbs model is well-suited to all three types, though its six-stage structure most naturally fits reflection on practice. For CPD or feedback reflections, the Description stage may focus on the learning activity or feedback received rather than a clinical event, while all other stages apply with equal analytical force. For professional reflective writing support, see our nursing reflection paper service or reflective essay writing service.
The Six Stages of Gibbs Reflective Cycle: Complete Analysis with Nursing Guidance
Each of the six stages of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle serves a specific analytical function. Understanding that function — not just what the stage is called, but what intellectual and emotional work it is asking you to do — is the difference between producing a superficial reflective essay that describes an experience with minimal insight and producing a genuinely reflective account that demonstrates professional growth, clinical reasoning, and evidence-based practice integration. What follows is a complete, in-depth analysis of each stage, including the guiding questions for each stage, common errors nurses and students make at that stage, and what distinguished reflective writing at that stage looks like.
The Description stage is the foundation of the entire reflective cycle, and its purpose is precisely what its name suggests: to produce a clear, factual, objective account of what happened during the experience you are reflecting on. This is not the place for interpretation, judgment, analysis, or emotional expression — all of those come later. At this stage, you are functioning as a careful observer recording the facts of the situation: where you were, who was involved, what was happening when the experience began, what events unfolded, and how the situation concluded. Think of it as setting the scene for a reader who was not present and needs to understand the context and sequence of events before any analysis can be meaningful.
In nursing reflective writing, effective description typically includes: the clinical setting (ward, community clinic, emergency department, ICU); the relevant patient context (without breachimg confidentiality — use first names or pseudonyms and omit identifying details); the time and circumstances of the encounter; the other healthcare professionals or team members involved; the key events in the sequence they occurred; and how the situation ended or resolved. The description should be detailed enough to make the subsequent stages meaningful but focused enough to remain centered on the specific experience you are reflecting on rather than background context that is not relevant to the reflection.
The most common error at the description stage is including evaluation or interpretation in the narrative — statements like “the situation was handled badly” or “fortunately, the patient was eventually calm” belong in the evaluation and feelings stages, not in the description. Strong description is as neutral as possible: it reports rather than judges, describes rather than interprets, and observes rather than concludes.
During my placement on a busy medical ward, I was responsible for the medication round for eight patients during the afternoon shift. While preparing oral medications for Mrs. P, an 82-year-old patient admitted with a urinary tract infection, I noticed that the prescribed dose of metformin appeared to have been doubled from the morning’s dosage on the electronic medication record. I called the prescribing junior doctor and informed the ward sister. The dose was reviewed, confirmed as a prescribing error, and corrected before the medication was administered. Mrs. P received her correct dose with no adverse outcome. The incident was documented according to the ward’s incident reporting procedure and the doctor was informed of the error by the ward sister.
The Feelings stage is the most distinctive feature of the Gibbs model and the one that sets it apart most clearly from purely analytical reflection frameworks. Gibbs explicitly included this stage because he understood that the emotional dimensions of a clinical experience are not incidental to what happened — they are part of what happened, and they profoundly influence how the practitioner perceived the situation, the decisions they made, and the learning that the experience can generate. A nurse who reflects only on the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of a difficult clinical experience and ignores the emotional dimensions has produced an incomplete reflection, regardless of how analytically sophisticated the rest of their account is.
In the Feelings stage, you are invited to describe honestly what you were thinking and feeling: before the event (if relevant), during it, and in its aftermath. This requires a degree of emotional self-awareness and professional vulnerability that many nurses — particularly those trained in clinical environments that emphasize stoicism and emotional containment — find genuinely challenging to access. The discomfort of articulating clinical feelings in writing is part of the reflective work. Common feelings reported in nursing clinical reflections include anxiety, uncertainty, fear of making mistakes, satisfaction when interventions succeed, grief and distress when patients deteriorate or die, moral discomfort when asked to participate in care they question ethically, and the particular combination of responsibility and powerlessness that characterizes many nursing experiences.
Crucially, the Feelings stage does not ask you to judge your emotional responses as appropriate or inappropriate — that evaluation belongs in the next stage. Here, you simply acknowledge and describe what you felt. Honesty is more valuable than emotional tidiness at this stage: a reflection that claims the nurse felt nothing but calm competence throughout a distressing clinical event is almost certainly less honest and less reflective than one that acknowledges distress, uncertainty, or discomfort alongside any elements of professional confidence.
When I first noticed the discrepancy in the metformin dosage, I felt a strong surge of anxiety. My initial thought was that I might be wrong — that perhaps the dose had been intentionally changed and I had simply not been informed, and that reporting it might cause unnecessary disruption or make me appear incompetent. I was also aware of a concern about how the junior doctor would respond to being informed of what might be their error. Despite these anxieties, I also felt a clear sense of professional responsibility that ultimately overrode my hesitation. After reporting the discrepancy and confirming it was an error, I felt relief that the situation had been caught before any harm occurred, and a sense of satisfaction that I had acted appropriately. However, I also felt unsettled for the rest of the shift, aware of how easily this error might have gone unnoticed, and what the consequences for Mrs. P could have been.
The Evaluation stage introduces explicit judgment into the reflective process for the first time. Here, you are asked to make balanced, honest assessments of the experience — identifying what went well, what went badly, what you are proud of, and what you wish had been different. The emphasis on balance is important: a reflective evaluation that identifies only what went wrong is as incomplete as one that identifies only what went well. Both produce a distorted picture of the clinical reality and generate correspondingly distorted learning.
In nursing practice, genuine evaluation requires the ability to separate what you did from your identity as a nurse — to acknowledge where your performance fell short of what you know is best practice without concluding that you are a bad nurse, and to acknowledge where your performance was strong without concluding that there is nothing further to learn. This capacity for non-defensive self-evaluation is a hallmark of professional maturity, and the Gibbs cycle’s explicit evaluation stage is designed to develop it systematically.
Effective nursing evaluation considers multiple dimensions: the clinical outcome (did the patient receive safe, effective care?), the process (were the right procedures followed? was communication appropriate?), the team dynamics (did the interprofessional team function effectively?), and the student or practitioner’s personal contribution (what did you personally do well, and where could you have performed better?). Evaluations that consider only one of these dimensions are partial. The most insightful evaluations acknowledge complexity — situations where some things went well and some things went poorly simultaneously, or where good outcomes were achieved through processes that could have been better.
On the positive side, I identified the prescribing error before it could cause harm — an outcome that reflects the importance of careful medication checking procedures, which I followed diligently. I reported the discrepancy promptly and to the appropriate people, demonstrating professional accountability. The ward sister and the doctor responded constructively, and the incident was documented correctly. These represent aspects of the experience I am genuinely satisfied with. However, I am aware that my initial hesitation before reporting — driven by anxiety about being wrong and concern about how my report would be received — represents a weakness. A more confident, experienced practitioner might have acted more quickly and with less internal conflict. The fact that I questioned my own clinical judgment rather than trusting it suggests that I need to develop greater confidence in my medication safety competency. Additionally, in retrospect, the interaction with Mrs. P during this delay could have been managed better — she noticed I was taking longer than usual and seemed anxious, and I did not adequately address her concern in the moment.
The Analysis stage is the intellectual center of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle and the stage at which nursing reflective writing most clearly distinguishes itself from diary-style personal reflection. Here, you move from describing and evaluating your experience to explaining it — drawing on theoretical frameworks, evidence-based literature, professional guidelines, and relevant nursing theory to understand why the situation unfolded as it did, what the contributing factors were, what the evidence suggests about how similar situations should be managed, and what your experience illuminates about broader principles of nursing practice.
In academic nursing reflections, the Analysis stage is where citations to peer-reviewed literature, clinical guidelines, and theoretical frameworks belong. If you are reflecting on a medication error scenario, the analysis stage might engage with the published literature on medication error causes and prevention (drawing on research from organisations like the Institute for Healthcare Improvement or the National Patient Safety Agency), the role of checking procedures in safety culture, human factors theory as it applies to nursing errors, or the concept of psychological safety in clinical teams and how it affects willingness to report concerns. The analysis goes beyond your personal experience to connect it to what nursing science and scholarship know about the phenomenon you have encountered.
This is also the stage where the feelings identified in Stage 2 become analytically productive. Why did you hesitate before reporting? Perhaps the literature on psychological safety in clinical teams — and the research demonstrating that nurses in high-hierarchy environments often suppress safety-relevant concerns for fear of negative responses — provides an explanatory framework. Why did you feel relief when the error was caught? Perhaps this connects to literature on moral distress and the importance of integrity preservation in nursing practice. The feelings stage gathers the emotional raw material; the analysis stage makes sense of it using evidence and theory.
Research on medication errors in hospital settings indicates that prescribing errors account for a significant proportion of preventable adverse drug events (Elliott et al., 2021). The National Institute for Health and Care Excellence (NICE) guidelines on medicines management emphasize the nurse’s role as a critical safety checkpoint in the medication administration process, particularly in identifying discrepancies between prescribed and intended doses. My correct identification of the error reflects the value of systematic medication checking procedures — specifically the “five rights” framework (right patient, right drug, right dose, right route, right time). My initial hesitation before reporting, however, can be understood through the lens of psychological safety theory as described by Edmondson (1999), who demonstrated that team members in environments with low perceived psychological safety are significantly less likely to voice concerns or report errors — even when they believe doing so is the right course of action. The clinical culture of nursing, which has historically been characterised by steep power gradients between nurses and doctors, may have contributed to my hesitation. Xyrichis and Ream’s (2008) work on interprofessional collaboration further suggests that confidence in reporting across professional hierarchies is a learnable skill that develops with experience and the cultivation of team environments where error reporting is normalized rather than stigmatised.
How to Integrate Literature in the Analysis Stage
The analysis stage of a Gibbs nursing reflection should include citations to peer-reviewed literature — not as decoration, but as analytical tools that genuinely deepen your understanding of the experience. Aim for three to six peer-reviewed sources in the analysis of a 2,000-word reflective essay. Choose sources that: directly address the clinical phenomenon you experienced (medication safety, communication breakdown, ethical dilemma, etc.); explain the professional or systemic factors that contributed to how the situation unfolded; or provide evidence-based guidance on best practice for similar situations. Theoretical frameworks — human factors theory, psychological safety theory, emotional intelligence frameworks, evidence-based practice models — are particularly valuable at this stage because they provide explanatory power that goes beyond describing what happened to understanding why it happened. For literature review and source integration support, see our literature review writing services.
The Conclusion stage synthesizes the reflective work done in all previous stages into a coherent statement of what has been learned. Unlike a traditional academic conclusion that summarizes what has been argued, the Gibbs conclusion is forward-looking and evaluative: it asks what you now understand about the experience that you did not understand at the time, what you could have done differently and why, what knowledge or skills gaps the experience has revealed, and what the experience ultimately taught you about yourself as a nursing practitioner.
Strong nursing reflective conclusions are honest and specific. They acknowledge genuine development needs rather than claiming comprehensive competence. They identify concrete alternative actions that could have been taken, grounded in the analysis performed in Stage 4. And they connect the individual experience to the practitioner’s broader professional development — what does this specific clinical encounter reveal about areas where you need to grow, and why does that growth matter for the patients you will care for in the future?
A common weakness at the conclusion stage is vagueness — concluding that “the experience taught me the importance of communication” or “I learned that teamwork is essential in nursing” without specifying what particular aspect of communication, what specific teamwork behavior, or how your understanding of these principles has been concretely refined by the experience. The conclusion should be as specific as the analysis it is built on. If the analysis identified hesitation as a problem rooted in psychological safety concerns in hierarchical clinical environments, the conclusion should address that specific issue specifically — not retreat to a generic claim about being more confident in the future.
This experience has reinforced my understanding of the critical importance of the nurse’s role in medication safety — specifically the responsibility to act on clinical concerns even in situations where reporting may feel uncomfortable or hierarchically risky. I could have reported the discrepancy more promptly by trusting my initial clinical judgment rather than allowing anxiety about being wrong to delay my response. The literature I have reviewed in analysis confirms that prompt reporting of concerns is safer than delayed reporting — even when the concern proves unfounded — and that the discomfort of speaking up across professional hierarchies is a known barrier to patient safety that can be actively managed through both individual development and team culture. This experience has also highlighted my need to develop greater confidence in my medication safety competency specifically. While I correctly identified the error, my self-doubt during the process suggests that my knowledge of expected dosage ranges for commonly used medications — including metformin — needs consolidation, so that I can respond to similar situations with greater certainty and speed in the future.
The Action Plan stage is where reflection becomes transformation — where the insights generated through the previous five stages are translated into concrete, specific, time-bound commitments to change professional practice. This stage closes the reflective cycle and opens the next one by specifying exactly what the practitioner will do differently, what they will learn, and how they will develop in response to what the reflection has revealed. Without a substantive action plan, the Gibbs cycle produces insight without change — which is intellectually interesting but professionally incomplete.
Effective nursing action plans share several characteristics. They are specific — identifying particular behaviors, knowledge areas, or skills to develop rather than offering vague intentions. They are realistic — describing actions that the practitioner can actually take given their current clinical context, role, and resources. They are time-referenced — indicating when the planned development will occur, rather than leaving it indefinitely deferred. And they are measurable — articulating outcomes that the practitioner will be able to recognize when achieved. The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) is frequently applied to nursing action plans, and applying it systematically is an effective way to move from intention to commitment.
Action plans in nursing reflective writing commonly include: plans to seek additional clinical training or supervision in a specific competency area; commitments to read specific literature or guidelines on a topic illuminated by the reflection; plans to discuss the experience in clinical supervision; intentions to seek feedback from senior colleagues on specific aspects of practice; and plans to practice specific clinical communication behaviors in future encounters. The action plan also feeds directly into the NMC revalidation framework — the reflective accounts required for revalidation explicitly ask how reflection has changed or will change practice, making the action plan the most directly professionally relevant component of the entire Gibbs cycle for registered nurses.
I will take three specific actions in response to this experience. First, within the next two weeks, I will complete a focused self-study review of expected therapeutic dose ranges for the ten most commonly administered medications on my placement ward, including metformin, and test my own knowledge using ward-based medication competency resources. This will directly address the knowledge gap that contributed to my self-doubt when identifying the prescribing error. Second, I will discuss this experience in my next clinical supervision session, specifically raising the issue of my hesitation in reporting the concern and asking my supervisor to help me develop strategies for acting on clinical concerns more promptly and confidently. Third, I will read Edmondson’s original work on psychological safety and one additional peer-reviewed paper on speaking up in clinical environments, with the goal of understanding the systemic factors that shape my response more deeply and identifying practical approaches to managing them. I will review my progress against these actions in six weeks at my next portfolio meeting with my practice assessor.
Complete Gibbs Reflective Cycle Nursing Example: End-of-Life Communication
The following is a complete worked example of the Gibbs Reflective Cycle applied to a second nursing scenario — one that explores the challenging territory of end-of-life communication, a situation many nursing students and practitioners identify as among the most emotionally and professionally demanding they encounter. Reading a full worked example gives you a concrete sense of how the stages flow into each other and how the cycle builds cumulatively toward insight and change.
Scenario Context
A third-year student nurse on a palliative care placement is present when a family member of a terminally ill patient — not yet told of the prognosis by the medical team — directly asks her, “Is my father going to die soon?” The student is not sure how to respond, says “I’m not sure” and quickly leaves the room to find the nurse in charge. The family member is visibly distressed when the student leaves. The nurse in charge later speaks with the family. This scenario involves professional boundaries, communication skills, palliative care principles, and the emotional dimensions of student nursing practice in end-of-life settings.
I was providing morning care for Mr. T, a 74-year-old patient on a specialist palliative care ward, admitted with an advanced pancreatic cancer diagnosis. His daughter, whom I had spoken with briefly on previous days, was visiting. While I was adjusting his pillows and checking his comfort, his daughter approached me and asked directly: “Is my father going to die soon? I just need to know.” Mr. T appeared to be sleeping. I felt immediately uncertain about what I was permitted to say and responded: “I’m not sure — I’ll ask the nurse.” I left the room quickly. I found the ward sister, relayed what had happened, and she went immediately to speak with the family. I did not return to the room until later that day.
When the daughter asked me her question, I experienced an immediate, intense anxiety that I found difficult to manage. My first thought was that I did not have the authority to disclose prognostic information — that doing so might conflict with the medical team’s disclosure plan or constitute professional overreach. I was also afraid of saying the wrong thing — of causing additional distress to a family already in a painful situation. After I left the room, I felt guilty for abandoning the daughter at a moment of evident need, even if I believed I had acted correctly in terms of professional boundaries. There was also a sense of inadequacy — a feeling that a more experienced nurse would have handled the situation with greater grace, staying with the daughter and offering something more than a hasty departure. I thought about the interaction repeatedly during the rest of the shift and was troubled by the image of the daughter’s expression as I left.
On the positive side, I correctly identified that disclosing prognostic information was outside my competency as a student nurse and appropriately escalated to the ward sister — who was the right person to engage with the family’s question. The ward sister was able to have a full and sensitive conversation with the family, which was a better outcome than if I had attempted to answer a question I was not prepared to manage. However, the manner in which I left the room was a clear failure: leaving abruptly, without acknowledging the daughter’s distress, without offering any reassurance that someone would speak with her, and without sitting with her for even a brief moment, was not compassionate care. The daughter’s evident distress when I left suggests that my departure felt like abandonment at a vulnerable moment. I also failed to explain why I was leaving or when the sister would arrive — both of which would have been simple, helpful things to say.
The literature on end-of-life communication in nursing emphasises that while prognostic disclosure is indeed a responsibility that lies primarily with the treating medical and nursing team — and that students are appropriately guided not to provide such information independently — the manner of deferral is itself a clinical and communication skill. Warnock et al. (2010) describe how nurses often feel underprepared for conversations about dying, leading to avoidance behaviours that can inadvertently increase patient and family distress. The NMC Code (2018) requires that all nurses “use their professional judgement… to ensure that people… receive the information they need to make decisions about their care.” While I could not appropriately answer the daughter’s prognostic question, I could have provided her with emotional presence, acknowledged her distress, and clearly communicated what would happen next — all within the scope of a student nurse’s appropriate role. Palliative care frameworks, including those described by Twycross and Wilcock (2001), consistently emphasize that presence and acknowledgement — being emotionally available even when one cannot answer the specific question being asked — are among the most therapeutically significant nursing contributions in end-of-life care contexts.
I could have managed this situation more compassionately without exceeding my professional boundaries. Rather than leaving abruptly, I could have sat with the daughter, acknowledged her distress verbally (“I can see how worried you are”), explained clearly and gently that I was going to ask the person best placed to answer her question to come and speak with her, and stayed with her until the ward sister arrived or until she indicated she preferred to be alone. I did not need to answer her question to respond to her as a human being in distress. This experience has revealed both a knowledge gap — insufficient familiarity with the specific communication frameworks recommended for end-of-life scenarios — and a skill gap: the ability to manage difficult conversations without either over-stepping professional boundaries or abandoning the relational dimension of nursing care.
I will seek out and complete the ward’s recommended communication skills training for end-of-life conversations, which my practice supervisor has mentioned is available to student nurses on this placement. I will read at least two peer-reviewed articles on compassionate communication in palliative nursing contexts within the next two weeks, using the ward’s access to the CINAHL database. I will practice the specific technique of presence-without-disclosure in a simulation or role-play scenario with my practice assessor before the end of this placement. Finally, I will reflect on this specific experience in my next tutorial with my academic supervisor, using it as the basis for our discussion of professional boundaries in nursing communication — a topic I now recognise as a genuine learning priority for my remaining clinical training.
This complete example illustrates how the six stages build cumulatively: the description provides the raw material, the feelings add emotional context, the evaluation provides honest assessment, the analysis connects the experience to evidence and theory, the conclusion synthesizes learning, and the action plan converts insight into professional development commitments. Notice also how the analysis stage is the longest and most intellectually dense — this reflects the general weighting appropriate for most nursing reflective assignments, where the analytical stage should receive the greatest proportion of word count.
Gibbs Reflective Cycle Across Other Nursing Scenarios: Topic Ideas and Analysis Directions
The Gibbs Reflective Cycle can be applied productively to virtually any significant clinical experience — from straightforward procedural encounters to complex ethical dilemmas, from interprofessional communication challenges to moments of exceptional compassionate care. The breadth of its applicability is one of its great strengths. Below, we outline the key features and analysis directions for ten additional clinical nursing scenarios frequently used in reflective assignments, with particular attention to the kinds of literature, frameworks, and theoretical lenses that typically enrich the analysis stage of each scenario type.
Scenario Type 1: Managing a Patient’s Pain Inadequately
Pain management failures are among the most commonly reflected-upon experiences in nursing, because they sit at the intersection of clinical knowledge (pain assessment, pharmacology, non-pharmacological interventions), professional advocacy (speaking up when pain is under-treated), patient communication (eliciting and validating pain experience), and the emotional experience of watching someone suffer without being able to relieve it immediately. Analysis in pain management reflections commonly draws on the principles of the biopsychosocial model of pain, pain assessment tools (NRS, VAS, Abbey Pain Scale for non-verbal patients), the WHO analgesic ladder, and literature on healthcare provider attitudes toward pain reporting. The feelings stage of pain management reflections frequently includes moral distress — the uncomfortable experience of knowing what the right clinical action would be while feeling unable to implement it within the current care system.
Scenario Type 2: Witnessing or Being Involved in a Clinical Error
Reflecting on clinical errors — whether one’s own or witnessed errors involving colleagues — requires particular care in the Description stage to remain factual and to preserve appropriate confidentiality. The analysis stage of error reflections is particularly rich because the evidence base on human error, systems thinking, and patient safety in nursing is substantial and theoretically sophisticated. Human factors theory, Swiss cheese model of accident causation (Reason, 1990), Just Culture frameworks, and the published literature on near-miss reporting and learning from error all provide powerful analytical tools. The Feelings stage of error reflections often reveals significant emotional content — guilt, shame, fear, and in the case of witnessed errors, moral distress — making this one of the scenarios where the feelings stage most clearly enriches the overall reflection.
Scenario Type 3: Responding to an Acutely Deteriorating Patient
The experience of recognizing and responding to acute patient deterioration — whether through the application of NEWS2 scoring, activation of a rapid response team, or direct emergency intervention — is clinically significant and reflectively rich. Analysis draws on the literature on early warning systems and their evidence base, situational awareness theory (Endsley, 1995), clinical decision-making frameworks, and the role of the nurse in identifying and communicating clinical concerns across professional hierarchies. The Feelings stage typically includes a complex combination of fear, urgency, a sense of clinical responsibility, and — depending on the outcome — either relief and satisfaction or grief and distress. Reflections on acute deterioration scenarios are particularly well-suited to exploring the development of clinical confidence and the specific competencies of emergency nursing assessment.
Scenario Type 4: Navigating an Ethical Dilemma in Practice
Ethical dilemmas — situations in which two or more morally defensible positions are in conflict — are among the most intellectually and emotionally demanding experiences nurses encounter. Reflections on ethical dilemmas draw analysis from bioethical frameworks (the four principles of Beauchamp and Childress: autonomy, beneficence, non-maleficence, and justice), nursing ethics literature, the NMC Code, and clinical ethics consultation processes. The description stage requires careful attention to the specific nature of the ethical conflict, and the evaluation stage must genuinely engage with why different positions on the dilemma have moral weight — not simply assert that one position was correct. Strong ethical dilemma reflections demonstrate the practitioner’s ability to hold moral complexity without premature resolution.
Scenario Type 5: A Challenging Interaction with a Patient or Family Member
Challenging interactions — including patient aggression, family conflict about care decisions, patient refusal of treatment, or communication breakdowns across language and cultural barriers — are experiences that nearly every nurse encounters and many find personally difficult. The analysis stage of these reflections benefits from engagement with communication theory (particularly the literature on therapeutic communication, de-escalation techniques, and trauma-informed care), cultural competence frameworks, and the evidence base on patient-centered communication in nursing. The feelings stage is particularly important in aggressive patient interaction reflections, because the emotional aftermath of patient aggression — including fear, anger, and the complex professional expectation that nurses should not express negative feelings about patients — is itself clinically significant and professionally important to process.
Confidentiality in Nursing Reflective Writing: Essential Guidance
All nursing reflective writing — whether for academic assignments, professional portfolios, or NMC revalidation accounts — must comply with patient and colleague confidentiality requirements. The NMC Code is explicit: patient information must be protected, and the identity of patients and colleagues must not be disclosed without consent. In practice, this means: always use pseudonyms or initials rather than real patient names; omit identifying information such as specific diagnoses combined with age and setting that could identify an individual; omit ward names and hospital names unless they are irrelevant to the reflection; change or generalize dates and specific clinical details where necessary for anonymization; and obtain advice from your institution or regulatory body if you are unsure whether your anonymization is adequate. Academic institutions and the NMC both accept fully anonymized reflections — the reflective value of the account does not depend on the reader being able to identify the specific people involved. For guidance on writing compliant, anonymized nursing reflections, see our nursing reflection paper service.
Gibbs vs. Other Reflective Models: How to Choose the Right Framework for Your Assignment
While the Gibbs Reflective Cycle is the most widely used reflection framework in nursing education and practice, it is not the only one — and in some assignment contexts, a different model may be more appropriate or explicitly required. Understanding the key differences between Gibbs and other major nursing reflection frameworks enables you to make an informed choice when your assignment brief gives you flexibility, and to explain the rationale for your model selection when that explanation is itself an assessed element of the assignment.
Gibbs Reflective Cycle
Six-stage cyclical model. Explicit feelings stage. Strong action plan focus. Best for: comprehensive clinical experience reflection at undergraduate and postgraduate level. Most accessible to practitioners new to formal reflection.
Reflective Practice Model
Distinguishes reflection-in-action (during practice) from reflection-on-action (after practice). Less structured than Gibbs. Best for: exploring real-time clinical decision-making. More suited to experienced practitioners than students.
Model of Structured Reflection
Question-driven framework using a cue sheet. Emphasizes five modes of knowing: aesthetic, personal, ethical, empirical, and reflexive. Best for: ethically complex clinical scenarios. Requires more theoretical familiarity to use effectively.
Experiential Learning Cycle
Four-stage cycle: Concrete Experience → Reflective Observation → Abstract Conceptualization → Active Experimentation. Foundation for Gibbs. Best for: learning theory contexts. Less clinical in focus than Gibbs or Johns.
What? So What? Now What?
Simplified three-question framework. Highly accessible but less structured. Best for: brief reflective accounts, NMC revalidation, or when a simpler structure is appropriate. Less suited to complex clinical scenarios requiring deep analysis.
When to Choose Gibbs Over Other Models
Choose the Gibbs Reflective Cycle when your assignment brief requires a structured, comprehensive reflection that explicitly addresses emotional dimensions, balanced evaluation, and a clear action plan. Gibbs is particularly well-suited to: undergraduate nursing reflective assignments where the six-stage structure helps students who are new to formal reflection; complex clinical experiences where multiple dimensions (cognitive, emotional, technical, interprofessional) need to be addressed; and NMC revalidation accounts where the action plan stage directly addresses the NMC’s requirement to explain how reflection has influenced practice. Choose Gibbs when your scenario involves a significant emotional component — the feelings stage makes it uniquely equipped to process emotionally demanding clinical experiences in a professionally appropriate way.
When Another Model Might Serve Better
Consider the Johns model when your reflection centers on an ethical dilemma or involves navigating complex professional values — Johns’ emphasis on the five modes of knowing provides a richer framework for ethical analysis than Gibbs’ evaluation stage alone. Consider Schön when your assignment explicitly asks you to explore the distinction between how you think in practice versus how you think about practice afterward — this distinction is Schön’s primary contribution and is not explicit in Gibbs. Consider Rolfe et al. when your assignment specifies a brief reflective account (500–800 words) or when you are completing a revalidation-type reflection that needs to be accessible and efficient rather than comprehensively structured. In most undergraduate and early postgraduate nursing assignments in the UK, US, and internationally, Gibbs is the safest and most appropriate default choice unless the assignment brief specifies otherwise.
| Model | Stages/Questions | Feelings Stage? | Literature Req’d? | Best Suited For |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| Gibbs (1988) | 6 structured stages | Yes — explicit | Yes — especially in Analysis | Comprehensive clinical experience reflection |
| Johns (1994) | Cue-based questions across 5 knowing modes | Partially (personal knowing) | Yes — ethical literature | Ethically complex scenarios; experienced practitioners |
| Schön (1983) | Reflection-in-action vs. on-action | Implicit | Varies | Real-time clinical decision-making exploration |
| Kolb (1984) | 4-stage cycle | Implicit | Yes — learning theory | Learning theory and educational contexts |
| Rolfe et al. (2001) | 3 questions (What? So What? Now What?) | Optional | Optional | Brief reflections; revalidation accounts |
Writing Your Gibbs Reflective Essay for Nursing: A Step-by-Step Practical Guide
Knowing how the Gibbs Reflective Cycle works conceptually is necessary but not sufficient for producing a high-quality nursing reflective assignment. The translation from model understanding to well-executed reflective essay requires a specific set of writing strategies that differ meaningfully from those used in other forms of academic nursing writing. This section provides a complete, practical guide to writing a Gibbs reflective essay for nursing — from selecting your scenario through to final submission.
Select Your Clinical Scenario Strategically
The best scenarios for Gibbs reflection are not necessarily the most dramatic or traumatic — they are experiences that genuinely prompted thinking, involved some degree of complexity or uncertainty, and contain enough dimensions (clinical, emotional, interprofessional, ethical) to generate substantive reflection across all six stages. The ideal scenario has a clear beginning, middle, and end; involves you directly as an active participant rather than a distant observer; generates genuine feelings that you can explore honestly; raises questions that peer-reviewed literature can meaningfully address in the analysis stage; and points toward concrete, specific actions you can plan in response. Avoid scenarios that are so routine that no genuine learning emerges, or so extreme that anonymization becomes impossible or emotional management becomes the primary challenge.
Plan Your Word Count Distribution Across the Six Stages
For a 2,000-word Gibbs reflective essay, a productive word count distribution is approximately: Description 200–250 words (10–12%); Feelings 200–250 words (10–12%); Evaluation 250–300 words (12–15%); Analysis 600–700 words (30–35%); Conclusion 250–300 words (12–15%); Action Plan 200–250 words (10–12%). The Analysis stage consistently receives the largest allocation because it is where the scholarly engagement with literature and theory occurs — and in most assessment rubrics, it is the stage most heavily weighted for marking. Students who write equal word counts for each stage typically produce under-developed analysis stages, which is one of the most common causes of lower marks in nursing reflective assignments.
Use First Person Throughout — But Selectively
Reflective writing is one of the few forms of academic nursing writing where first-person voice is not just permitted but required — “I felt,” “I did,” “I observed” are appropriate and necessary. However, first person use should be purposeful, not reflexive. In the analysis stage particularly, it is appropriate to shift between first-person reflection (“I was hesitant because…”) and evidence-based third-person claims (“Research demonstrates that…”) — and the skill of weaving these two modes together is a marker of strong reflective academic writing. Avoid the common error of producing analysis that consists entirely of personal reflections without literature, or literature review that reads as a standalone essay disconnected from the personal experience being reflected on.
Use Subheadings to Signal Stage Transitions
Unless your assignment brief specifically prohibits subheadings, use a clear subheading for each Gibbs stage — Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, Action Plan — to help your reader follow the reflective structure and to help you maintain disciplined stage separation during writing. The most common structural error in Gibbs reflective essays is stage bleed — evaluation content appearing in the description, analysis content appearing in the conclusion, or feelings content being avoided entirely. Subheadings both signal and enforce the analytical boundaries between stages, and they make it easier for your marker to find and assess content for each component of the rubric.
Gather Literature Before Writing the Analysis
The Analysis stage requires peer-reviewed literature, and that literature should be gathered and read before the analysis is written — not discovered during the writing process and inserted awkwardly. For a 2,000-word reflective essay, aim for three to six peer-reviewed sources. Use CINAHL and PubMed to identify current literature directly relevant to the clinical phenomenon your scenario involves. Also locate any relevant professional guidance documents — NMC Code, NICE guidelines, Royal College of Nursing publications — that bear on the clinical situation. Read your sources with annotation notes before writing, and draft a brief synthesis of what they collectively say about the phenomenon before beginning to write your analysis paragraph by paragraph. This pre-writing synthesis prevents the most common analysis error: summarizing sources one by one rather than integrating them around analytical claims. For support with literature sourcing and integration, see our literature review writing services and research paper writing services.
Write a Specific, Actionable Action Plan — Not a List of Good Intentions
The Action Plan is the stage where many reflective essays lose marks through vagueness. “I will improve my communication skills” is not an action plan — it is an aspiration. “Within the next four weeks, I will complete the ward’s mandatory communication training module, attend one clinical supervision session focused specifically on difficult conversation management, and read at least one peer-reviewed paper on therapeutic communication in end-of-life care” is an action plan. Specific verbs (complete, attend, read, practise, discuss, seek), specific timeframes, and specific resources or activities are the markers of a strong action plan. The SMART framework (Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Relevant, Time-bound) is your best structuring tool for this stage. When your action plan is genuinely specific and time-bound, it also has direct practical value for your professional portfolio and CPD planning — making it useful beyond the immediate assignment.
Common Mistakes in Gibbs Reflective Nursing Essays — and How to Avoid Every One
After reviewing hundreds of nursing reflective essays, the patterns of error that consistently produce lower marks are well documented. Understanding these mistakes before you write your reflective essay is far more efficient than discovering them through feedback. Every error described below is entirely preventable — and knowing the specific behavior pattern that produces each one is the first step to preventing it in your own work.
✅ What Strong Reflective Essays Do
- Use all six Gibbs stages distinctly and in sequence
- Write honestly about feelings, including uncomfortable ones
- Provide balanced evaluation — both positives and negatives
- Integrate peer-reviewed literature analytically in Stage 4
- Connect literature to personal experience, not just cite it
- Identify specific alternative actions in the Conclusion
- Write a SMART, time-referenced Action Plan
- Maintain patient confidentiality throughout
- Use first person appropriately and purposefully
- Allocate the most word count to Analysis
✗ What Weak Reflective Essays Do
- Mix stages together — evaluation in description, etc.
- Skip or minimize the Feelings stage entirely
- Only identify what went wrong, ignoring what went well
- Include no peer-reviewed literature anywhere
- Summarize sources one by one without synthesis
- Conclude with vague generalities (“I learned communication matters”)
- Write a generic Action Plan with no specifics or timelines
- Include patient names or identifying information
- Describe only events without any analytical depth
- Allocate equal word count to all six stages
The “Feelings Avoidance” Problem — The Most Common Nursing-Specific Error
The most distinctively nursing-specific error in Gibbs reflective essays is the systematic avoidance or minimization of the Feelings stage. Nursing culture — particularly in acute care settings — has historically discouraged emotional expression in professional contexts, valuing stoicism and technical competence over emotional transparency. This cultural norm, while understandable as an adaptive response to the emotional demands of clinical practice, produces nursing students and practitioners who find the explicit articulation of clinical feelings deeply uncomfortable and professionally unfamiliar. The result, in reflective writing, is a Feelings stage that is either absent (“I felt that the situation was handled appropriately” — this is not a feeling, it is an evaluation) or so brief and sanitized as to be analytically useless.
The antidote is to understand that the Feelings stage is not an invitation to emotional self-indulgence — it is an analytical requirement. Your emotional response to a clinical experience is clinically significant data. It tells you something about your values, your assumptions, your competency confidence, your relationships with patients and colleagues, and the systemic conditions of your clinical environment. A feelings stage that honestly reports anxiety, guilt, uncertainty, grief, or moral discomfort — and that then connects those feelings analytically to relevant literature and theory in Stage 4 — produces far more clinically meaningful reflection than a feelings stage that reports only calm competence. The feelings stage is not a weakness confession. It is an evidence base for professional learning.
The “Story Without Learning” Trap
Many nursing reflective essays produce engaging, detailed accounts of clinical experiences that are essentially extended stories with very thin analytical layers applied superficially at the end. The description is vivid and specific; the feelings are acknowledged; but the evaluation is cursory, the analysis has little or no literature, the conclusion is generic, and the action plan is vague. This pattern produces an essay that reads as a clinical narrative rather than a piece of professional scholarship — and it typically earns marks in the lower range of the grade band because the analytical evidence of learning and professional development is insufficient. The cure for this pattern is simple but demanding: force the Analysis stage to be the longest and most intellectually rigorous stage of your essay, require it to contain peer-reviewed citations, and do not accept any analytical claim that is not supported by either evidence or a named theoretical framework. Story first; learning demonstrated through analysis second.
A Critical Caution: Reflection Is Not Confession
A recurring concern among nursing students approaching reflective assignments is whether honest reflection — particularly about clinical errors, professional hesitation, or emotional difficulty — will be used against them in practice assessments or disciplinary processes. This concern, while understandable, is generally misplaced in academic contexts. Reflective assignments are designed to develop professional insight, not to identify practitioners for punitive action. Markers are looking for evidence of learning, self-awareness, and commitment to professional development — not for confession of incompetence. However, if your reflection involves a clinical incident that has been formally reported or that resulted in patient harm, it is advisable to seek guidance from your practice supervisor, academic supervisor, or union representative about what information is appropriate to include in an academic submission, and to ensure that your account is consistent with any formal incident documentation. In all cases, maintain patient and colleague confidentiality as the primary non-negotiable standard. For professional support navigating sensitive reflective writing, see our nursing reflection paper service.
Using Gibbs Reflective Cycle for NMC Revalidation: A Registered Nurse’s Guide
For registered nurses practicing in the United Kingdom, the Nursing and Midwifery Council’s revalidation requirements give the Gibbs Reflective Cycle direct professional relevance beyond academic assignments. NMC revalidation requires every registered nurse to submit five written reflective accounts per three-year revalidation period — each account reflecting on an aspect of the NMC Code relevant to their practice. The reflective accounts must demonstrate how the Code has informed practice, not merely describe a clinical experience. This requirement makes the Analysis stage of the Gibbs cycle particularly critical for revalidation purposes: the analytical connection between your clinical experience and the specific provisions of the NMC Code is not optional — it is the primary evaluative criterion.
Applying the Gibbs model to NMC revalidation accounts requires two specific adaptations from the academic essay format. First, revalidation accounts are significantly shorter — typically 500 to 1,000 words per account — which means the six stages must be compressed while maintaining their analytical integrity. Second, the analysis stage must explicitly reference the relevant provision(s) of the NMC Code, identifying which specific Code principles the experience engaged with and how the reflection has deepened understanding or changed practice in relation to those principles. The Code’s four themes — Prioritise People, Practise Effectively, Preserve Safety, and Promote Professionalism and Trust — provide the organizational framework for Code-referenced analysis.
NMC Revalidation Reflective Account: Gibbs Cycle in 700 Words — How to Structure It
Allocate approximately: Description 80–100 words (concise scene-setting); Feelings 60–80 words (honest but brief); Evaluation 80–100 words (key positives and negatives); Analysis 200–250 words (Code reference, evidence, learning — this must name the specific Code provision); Conclusion 80–100 words (specific learning); Action Plan 80–100 words (what has changed or will change in practice). The NMC does not require peer-reviewed citations in revalidation accounts, but naming the relevant Code section is non-negotiable. Revalidation accounts must be discussed with a reflective discussion partner — not an NMC assessor — before submission.
According to guidance published by the Nursing and Midwifery Council, reflective accounts should not name or identify patients, service users, colleagues, or organisations — the same confidentiality requirements that apply to academic reflective writing apply equally to revalidation submissions. The NMC provides a specific form (Form 4) for recording reflective accounts, which prompts practitioners to identify the relevant Code theme, describe the experience, and explain how the reflection has influenced their practice. The Gibbs cycle provides exactly the structure needed to produce substantive, credible content for each of these prompts.
For registered nurses who find the reflective writing process challenging — whether for revalidation or for postgraduate study — professional support is available. Smart Academic Writing’s nursing reflection specialists are familiar with both NMC revalidation requirements and postgraduate reflective assignment rubrics, and can provide guidance on reflective writing development, review of draft accounts, or full professional reflective writing support. See our nursing reflection paper service and reflective essay writing service for further information.
FAQs: Your Gibbs Reflective Cycle Nursing Questions Answered
Gibbs Reflective Cycle in Nursing: From Framework to Professional Wisdom
The Gibbs Reflective Cycle is not a bureaucratic requirement imposed on nursing practice from the outside — it is a tool developed specifically to help practitioners do something that professional nursing actually demands but does not automatically teach: learn from experience in a structured, systematic way that produces genuine improvement. The six stages — Description, Feelings, Evaluation, Analysis, Conclusion, and Action Plan — each serve a distinct purpose in the reflective process, and their power lies in their integration. A description without analysis produces narrative. Analysis without feelings produces cold rationalism. Evaluation without action planning produces insight without change. The cycle works because all six stages work together, building cumulatively from raw experience through emotional acknowledgement, balanced judgment, theoretical understanding, and honest self-assessment to concrete professional commitment.
For nursing students, the ability to apply the Gibbs Reflective Cycle fluently and honestly is not just an assessment skill — it is a professional development tool that, used consistently throughout clinical training and registered practice, produces the kind of accumulated professional wisdom that separates good nurses from excellent ones. Every clinical encounter contains lessons. Gibbs provides the framework for finding them. For practicing nurses, reflective practice using Gibbs is not only a revalidation requirement but a resilience resource — a structured way of processing the emotional and moral demands of nursing work so that they generate growth rather than accumulating as unprocessed burden.
For all the detail in this guide, the most important thing you can do with the Gibbs Reflective Cycle is to use it honestly — to actually sit with the discomfort of Stage 2 feelings, to actually apply the intellectual effort of Stage 4 analysis, and to actually commit to the specific behavioral changes of Stage 6 action planning. Reflective exercises that go through the motions of the six stages without genuine engagement produce academic credits but not professional development. Reflective exercises that engage honestly with all six stages produce both — and produce the kind of nursing practitioner that patients need and deserve.
For professional support at any stage of your nursing reflective writing — whether you need help identifying a suitable scenario, building an evidence base for your analysis, structuring your essay, or producing a complete reflective account from scratch — the nursing reflection specialists at Smart Academic Writing are here to help. Explore our nursing reflection paper service, reflective essay writing service, nursing assignment help, editing and proofreading, and literature review writing — all delivered by credentialed nursing professionals who understand both the clinical depth and academic rigour that nursing reflective assignments demand.