A study on Korean nursing students' educational outcomes

The purpose of this study was to describe outcome indicators of nursing education including critical thinking, professionalism, leadership, and communication and to evaluate differences among nursing programs and academic years. A descriptive research design was employed. A total of 454 students from four year baccalaureate (BS) nursing programs and two three-year associate degree (AD) programs consented to complete self-administered questionnaires. The variables were critical thinking, professionalism, leadership and communication. Descriptive statistics, χ(2)-test, t-tests, ANOVA, and the Tukey test were utilized for the data analysis. All the mean scores of the variables were above average for the test instruments utilized. Among the BS students, those in the upper classes tended to attain higher scores, but this tendency was not identified in AD students. There were significant differences between BS students and AD students for the mean scores of leadership and communication. These findings suggested the need for further research to define properties of nursing educational outcomes, and to develop standardized instruments for research replication and verification.