Design thinking competence as self-perceived by nursing students in Taiwan: A cross-sectional study

Competence in design thinking plays a pivotal role when undertaking innovative problem-solving. Our knowledge on nursing students' self-perceived design thinking competence, however, is noticeably lacking, particularly in Taiwan.

To examine Taiwanese nursing students' self-perceived competence in design thinking.

Descriptive, cross-sectional, quantitative study.

One hundred and one nursing students enrolled in the interdisciplinary capstone courses, which were jointly offered to industrial design students, as part of a 4-year nursing program at a science and technology university in northern Taiwan.

Self-reported questionnaire data were collected from students, including their demographics and self-perceived competence in design thinking as measured by the Creative Synthesis Inventory and the Design Thinking Traits Questionnaire between January 2020 and January 2021.

Distinctive and reliable individual differences were found in nursing students' self-perceived competence in design thinking. In addition, students perceived a significantly higher creative synthesis skill of discovery in developing an understanding of potential users and a significantly lower design thinking trait of optimism, not backing down from challenging problems. Finally, greater perceived competence in creative synthesis skills were significantly correlated with greater perceived competence in all design thinking traits, except the trait of optimism.

Results indicated that significant individual differences exist in Taiwanese nursing students' self-perceived design thinking competence, suggesting opportunities for helping students with lower perceived competence. Overall, Taiwanese students believed themselves to be less skilled in visualization, prototyping, and evaluation as well as lacking an attribute of optimism when encountering challenging problems. Therefore, as informed by the design thinking framework, nursing schools should focus on developing strategies through training and practice to foster creative synthesis skills and designer traits in students, particularly targeting those who self-perceived as less competent and those skills and traits self-perceived as weaknesses.