[Research-based thinking of nurses at the end of their basic nursing education]

The purpose of this study was to find out the level of research-based thinking that students have internalized during their professional education. The research-based thinking of students has been investigated by analyzing the study reports, they have made at the end of their professional education. "The research-based thinking" is evaluated from the perspective of a research consumer. So, the purpose of this study was not to evaluate the level of studies, but the basis of them. The data consisted of 51 study reports. The data was analyzed by using the content analysis and descriptive statistics. The content analysis was based on the set of general rules for research using deductive methods of approach. The students' problems in research-based thinking fell mainly into the following parts: (1) the students did not use previous studies to build up the frame and the problems of their study, the students used scientific publications limitedly, it seems that the knowledge had the same value to the students regardless of the reference they have taken it from; (2) the students had difficulties in connecting the empirical part of their study with theoretical or conceptual frame. In this study the results indicated, that Finnish nursing students' research-based thinking is not mature in their study-reports at the end of education. It seems important to do further research to be able to analyze the reasons for these findings and how education could be improved in the future.