Learning Objective #1: Identify the new graduates perceptions about helpful and less helpful learning strategies

Learning Objective #2: Identify the themes found in the interviews of the new graduates

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In current health care settings, nurses are expected to make clinical judgments for the welfare of the patients. One aim of nursing education is to help students learn to be beginning practitioners, which includes making clinical judgments that ensure patient safety. Clinical judgments often determine how quickly a life threatening complication is detected, how soon people leave the hospital, or learn to take care of themselves. However, current research shows that students do not perform well at the task of making clinical judgments. This occurs despite the fact that students have graduated from accredited schools of nursing and have passed the NCLEX (state board test) exam. This descriptive qualitative study examined the perceptions of nursing graduates about learning to make clinical judgments. Over a period of nine months, and on three different occasions, BSN graduates were interviewed to determine their perceptions of learning to ‘think like a nurse'. The themes found in the interviews with both the new graduates and the preceptors were similar. The major themes were developing confidence, over whelmed with responsibility, relationship to ‘the other', thinking critically about work, and experiences. In addition, the learning strategies the new graduates perceived were and were not helpful are identified. In addition, the new graduates had difficulty identifying priority problems and interventions in a case study. The results of the study will be helpful in identifying learning strategies to assist nursing students and new graduates to be successful in learning think like a nurse.