Critical Thinking a Crucial Skill for Public Health Leaders

A public health professional is expected to come up with quick, single and definitive answers. These answers impact health and wellbeing of many beneficiaries. The skill of critical thinking helps in drawing right conclusions from available information and prevent misperception, various types of biases, blind spots, preconception, distortion and other flaws. Critical thinking is self-guided, self-disciplined thinking in a fair-minded way. Ennis (1993) defined it as," Critical thinking is reasonable reflective thinking focussed on deciding what to do." The opposite of critical thinking is selective thinking. Selective thinking involves taking quick, biased decisions without much thinking, analysis, objectivity, reinforcement of one's own pre-conceived ideas. Lack of critical thinking leads to mistakes, missed opportunities, and failure. In today's world, full of uncertainty, ambiguity, fast-changes, incessant distraction and information overload, critical thinking is an essential skill for public health leaders. This skill can be acquired by consciously practising it till it becomes a habit. The public health leaders need to create a culture of critical thinking in their organization by setting an example and facilitating it in routine work. This article summarises the actions public health professionals need to take to practice and promote critical thinking.