At the Children's Nursing Educator Forum meeting on 5^th March 2025, Dr. Cynthia Spies from the University of the Free State, South Africa, presented valuable insights into how instrumental effective debriefing can be in nursing education.

In her presentation "Debriefing Done Right: Strategies for Meaningful Reflection and Learning”, she explained how debriefing is not just highly effective in small groups but can also be effectively used in large groups. This is provided that the facilitator can direct the conversation. It encourages reflection by the students and provides opportunities for introverted students to participate at their own pace of readiness without feeling pressured to contribute until they are prepared. Dr. Spies clarified the difference between mentorship and debriefing — where mentorship is leading students and answering their questions, and debriefing is seeing what students learned and how they arrived at the answer. Dr. Spies also clarified the difference between feedback and debriefing and noted that traditional feedback is telling students how they performed, while debriefing is having students discuss it in a reflective conversation in order to find out what they were thinking in arriving at the answer. One of the key ways of facilitating such sessions well is through the type of questions asked of the learners.

After the presentation, the members had breakout sessions where they deliberated on how debriefing could be integrated in their current practice of teaching. Feedback from the groups was positive, with the realisation that debriefing could be highly adaptable and potentially utilized in both academic and clinical learning.