Charting a new course in knowledge: creating life-long critical care thinkers

The Registered Nurses Professional Development Centre's Critical Care Nursing Program situated in Halifax, Nova Scotia, aspires to provide evidence-based critical care nursing education. Using a didactic traditional lecture-based teaching method, the faculty noted that some learners were not prepared for class, preferred memorization of content and were not engaged in their learning. In 2008, faculty acknowledged the need to change their principal teaching method in the full-time program to a method that would foster student engagement and active learning while inspiring registered nurses to become life-long critical thinkers. After consulting with colleagues, attending conferences and reviewing the literature, team-based learning (TBL) was chosen as the strategy to achieve this goal. Although some challenges were experienced during the adoption of TBL, the faculty believed that TBL enhanced the learners' critical thinking abilities and teamwork skills.