| Learning Objective #1: Recognize the role "exemplars" can have in the development of critical thinking skills of nursing students | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Appreciate one way to help students integrate readings into practice |
This presentation will summarize a qualitative research project conducted at a rural university with senior baccalaureate nursing students. The project was designed in part to help students better understand the professional nurse’s role in providing complex patient care. It helped students gain skill in providing care to acutely ill clients through enhanced problem solving skills and a better understanding of the necessary determinants of care. Students used the “thinking in action approach” as described in the Benner, Hooper-Kyriakidis, and Stannard (1999) Clinical Wisdom and Interventions in Critical Care text. Students were assigned to the emergency room, telemetry and intensive care units during their critical care rotation. They developed written clinical narratives (exemplars) to describe the observed actions/behaviors of experienced registered nurses and other health personnel on the various clinical units. Categories for the narratives included those described in the text: end-of-life care issues, patient advocacy, use of technology, crisis management, dealing with life-threatening issues, quality of care, caring for patient families, comfort measures, communication, and ethical issues. Faculty discussed the observed events with the individual student to assist them in capturing the significance of the event and to enhance their critical thinking about the situation. The students shared their observed events with other students during daily clinical conferences and submitted a written summary of the event to the faculty. Analysis of the written narratives was facilitated using NUD*IST(Non-numerical Unstructured Data Indexing Searching and Theorizing), a data analysis program which enabled the faculty to search for certain descriptors of nursing actions identified by the students such as “assess,” “plan,” “anticipate.”
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