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Developing critical thinking skills from clinical assignments: a pilot study on nursing students' self-reported
Gail Marchigiano1, Nina Eduljee, Kimberly Harvey
1Department of Nursing, Saint Joseph's College of Maine, Standish, ME, USA. gmarchig@sjcme.edu
Journal of Nursing Management
|January 13, 2011
Summary
Nursing students feel more confident using journaling than care plans to develop critical thinking skills. This study suggests journaling is an effective strategy for enhancing nursing students' thinking skills in patient care.
Area of Science:
- Nursing Education
- Clinical Skills Development
- Critical Thinking in Healthcare
Background:
- Clinical educators face challenges in developing effective teaching strategies for nursing students.
- Fostering critical and reflective thinking is essential for sound nursing practice.
- Transferring theoretical knowledge to practical patient care is a key goal in nursing education.
Purpose of the Study:
- To assess nursing students' confidence levels in applying thinking skills.
- To compare student confidence between two clinical assignment formats: journaling and care plans.
- To identify effective strategies for enhancing critical thinking in nursing education.
Main Methods:
- The study utilized a theoretical framework of critical thinking within the nursing process.
- Fifty-one undergraduate nursing students participated in the study.
- Students completed surveys to report their confidence in using seven key thinking skills.
Main Results:
- Students reported significantly higher confidence when using the journal format compared to the care plan format.
- This enhanced confidence was observed across multiple thinking skills, including information analysis, relevance determination, making connections, information selection, knowledge application, and outcome evaluation.
- The journal format appears to be more effective in building student confidence in applying critical thinking skills.
Conclusions:
- Journaling emerges as a promising strategy for improving nursing students' thinking skills.
- The findings suggest a potential new approach to clinical assignments in nursing education.
- Nursing managers can support this strategy by promoting journaling and creating supportive learning environments.
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