| Course | PU699 Master of Public Health Capstone |
|---|---|
| Unit | Unit 9 |
| Paper type | Reflection on practice |
| Length | About 920 words, 6 pages double-spaced |
| Format | APA 7 student paper |
| School | Purdue University Global |
| Program | Master of Public Health (MPH) |
| Updated | October 2026 |
Free sample paper for PU699 Unit 9
Before, I Posted Yesterday's Answer; Now I Log Every Call Beside the Next Day's Result: A Unit 9 Reflection on Practice Tracing Four Changes and One Habit That Did Not Move Through a Beach Advisory Capstone
[Student Name]
Purdue University Global
PU699: Master of Public Health Capstone
Unit 9 Reflection on Practice
[Instructor Name]
[Date]
The writer, Port Alder and its staff are composite; the reflective practice framework and the research cited are real.
Account One: The Log
The moment: in the second week of the term, I lined up two years of advisory postings against the next day's results for the first time and found 19 of 64. The old habit: I posted advisories, filed results and wrote an annual report that listed both in separate tables. I never compared them, because the procedure never asked me to. The new one: every morning since July, my log carries a column for the call I made and a column, filled in the next day, for what the water was. At the end of each week I count the matches. The evidence: the log itself, which my supervisor now reviews monthly, and the season-end table in the October report, which did not exist before. The most consequential change in my practice was a column in a spreadsheet, because it turned a routine I performed into a decision I could check.
Account Two: Writing for a Director
The moment: I sent the director a four-page cover memo for the draft protocol. It came back with one note at the top: finding first. The old habit: my field reports and memos followed the order I had done the work, background, methods, results, and put the conclusion on the last page. The new one: I open with the finding and the decision I am asking for, in two sentences, and put method underneath for whoever wants it. The evidence: a before-and-after pair of field reports on a sewage overflow, filed in April and August, which the portfolio includes.
Account Three: Lifeguards as Colleagues
The moment: the head lifeguard read my draft schedule and pointed out that posting at 9 a.m. meant lifeguards would be pulling down flags that swimmers had already seen at 8:00. He also said his staff watch the gulls on the Alder Point sand every afternoon and nobody had ever asked them what they see. The old habit: I treated lifeguards as the people who raised the flags I chose. My contact with them was a text message. The new one: lifeguard observations are now part of the decision rule at Alder Point, and the posting time moved to fit their opening. I meet the lifeguard captains at the start and middle of the season. The evidence: the protocol's Section 5, which names lifeguard gull observations as an input, and the revised schedule. This account carries the most weight because it contradicts my earlier view of my own job. I had thought of advisories as a laboratory product; they turn out to be a joint product of the laboratory, the weather and the people standing on the beach.
Account Four: Testing a Model on Data It Has Not Seen
The moment: my first model, fit to both seasons at once, looked excellent. A classmate asked how it did on data it had not been built from, and I had no answer. The old habit: I trusted results that looked good and checked results that looked bad. The new one: I validate on a season the model did not see, and I treat a beach where the model fails as a finding, not a problem to tune away, as the Chicago work on beach models suggested I should expect (Nevers & Whitman, 2011). The evidence: the analysis script, which fits on one season and predicts the other, and the Alder Point result, which is reported rather than hidden.
What Did Not Move
Negotiation remains weak. When the parks director objected to the cost of new signs, I conceded the Spanish versions within a minute, then had to ask for them back the next week after the head lifeguard told me how many families at Mill Creek speak Spanish at home. I avoid disagreement in the room and repair it afterward by email, which costs time and trust. I have not changed this, and I am not going to claim a change the record does not show. What I can say is that I now know the pattern, and I have asked my supervisor to let me lead the October report meeting with the parks department so I can practice in a meeting where I know the facts well.
How I Understand These Changes
Reflection on practice is most useful when it looks at what a practitioner actually did and why, rather than at what she meant to do, and when it changes the next action (Schön, 1983). The four accounts meet that test because each ends in a document someone else can read. The fifth, negotiation, does not yet, and that is the honest place to end. A review of reflective practice in the health professions found that reflection develops with mentoring, feedback and a supportive setting rather than alone (Mann et al., 2009), and three of the four changes here began with someone else's comment: a classmate's question, a director's note and a lifeguard's correction. Every account points to a file in the portfolio so that a reader can examine the evidence directly.
References
Mann, K., Gordon, J., & MacLeod, A. (2009). Reflection and reflective practice in health professions education: A systematic review. Advances in Health Sciences Education, 14(4), 595-621. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10459-007-9090-2
Nevers, M. B., & Whitman, R. L. (2011). Efficacy of monitoring and empirical predictive modeling at improving public health protection at Chicago beaches. Water Research, 45(4), 1659-1668. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.watres.2010.12.010
Schön, D. A. (1983). The reflective practitioner: How professionals think in action. Basic Books.
What the PU699 Unit 9 assignment asks for
Unit 9 typically asks you to reflect on how the capstone changed your professional practice. Choose a few specific changes and present each with the moment that prompted it, what you did before, what you do now and evidence another person could check. Order the accounts in a way that makes sense, such as chronologically. Give the most space to the change that altered how you understand your role. Include at least one area that did not change, and say what you will do about it. Connect your reflection to a model or literature on reflective practice if your program asks for it. Write in first person, professionally enough to share with a supervisor. Five to six pages is common.
How the PU 699 Unit 9 example is put together
The reflection follows four accounts with identical beats. The first describes the log that now pairs each call with the next day's result, with a highlighted line calling it the most consequential change. The second covers a director's note and a pair of before-and-after field reports. The third, the longest and flagged in a margin note, describes the head lifeguard's corrections and how they changed the writer's view of her job. The fourth covers out-of-sample validation and reporting a beach where the model failed. A section on what did not move describes conceding in meetings. The close draws on reflective practice literature and a review linking reflection to feedback and mentoring.
Where the points sit in the PU699 Unit 9 rubric
Reflection on practice assignments are generally graded on specificity and evidence. Points go to concrete changes tied to identifiable moments and supported by documents others can examine. Credit rises when at least one change reaches the writer's understanding of their role rather than only procedure. Instructors value honest treatment of what did not change, with a plan. Connection to reflective practice literature, where requested, adds marks. A consistent structure helps graders compare accounts. Professional tone and APA citations complete the rubric. Reflections that list feelings or general growth without evidence tend to score poorly. Graders also notice whether the evidence for each change was produced by someone other than the writer, such as a supervisor's review or a colleague's comment, which makes the claim far more credible.
PU699 Unit 9 help from the desk
Students often describe growth in general terms, such as becoming more confident, with nothing a reader could verify. Point to a document. Another weakness is claiming changes in every area, which reads as unreflective. Include something that did not change. Avoid naming colleagues in ways that would embarrass them. Keep accounts parallel so they can be compared. Connect changes to the moments that caused them. If your capstone is done and you need help turning your experience into a reflection with evidence, send us your notes and artifacts and we will draft it. Finally, end with the honest gap rather than a summary of growth.
Get a PU699 Unit 9 example written to your instructions
A reflection like this starts from your own moments, so list three or four points in the project where your work habits shifted and one where they did not, and include the Unit 9 prompt and rubric. Written to those instructions and back in 24-48h, the free first custom sample ties each change to evidence. The paper above is an original model document written by our desk, not a submitted student paper and not an official Purdue University Global document.
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PU699 Unit 9 questions, answered
How personal should a reflection on practice be?
Personal enough to be specific, professional enough to share with a supervisor. First person is normal, and admitting a weakness is expected in many sections. Keep out details about colleagues, clients or cases that the site would not want in a course file. The reflection is about your practice, so its evidence should be your own documents and decisions.
Should the reflection connect to the competencies mapped earlier?
Where the prompt asks for it, yes, but through the accounts rather than a list. An account of rerunning an analysis by script supports the data analysis competency more convincingly than a sentence claiming it. If a mapped competency produced no change in practice, the reflection can say so; that honesty often strengthens the portfolio that follows.
Can a reflection model like Gibbs or Kolb be used?
Some instructors ask for one, and a named model gives the reflection a clear shape. If the prompt names none, a consistent structure of your own, such as moment, old habit, new habit and evidence, serves the same purpose. Whichever you use, apply it to every account so the reader can compare them. A model applied loosely helps less than none.
Where can I find a free PU699 Unit 9 sample paper?
The full Unit 9 reflection on practice, with four accounts and the habit that did not change, is open on this page.
What counts as evidence of changed practice?
A document someone else can examine, such as a revised form, a new log or a before-and-after pair of reports, rather than a statement of intent.