Background.  Despite of overwhelming evidence of using case scenario is beneficial to students in improving their ability in critical thinking, little is known about the perception and experience of teachers who created and used these scenarios.
Objective. The purposes of this pilot study were to understand the perception of nursing teacher in using case scenario to improve students’ ability of critical thinking and to understand their experience especially challenges and difficulties they faced in creating case scenarios.
Methods. One-on-one interview of nursing faculty in a university in Taiwan who created and used case scenarios in classroom discussion was conducted. The individual interview data were analyzed using content analysis.
Results. A total of 6 nursing faculty were interviewed. Initial findings revealed that all teachers valued highly the contribution of case scenarios in enhancing and evaluating critical thinking of nursing students. The process of case scenario discussion served as a bridge between classroom teaching and clinical practice. It was a useful teaching strategy that is interactively and of interest to students. For teachers themselves, use of case scenarios functioned as inspiration to their own thinking process to stimulate creativity and promote logicality. The major challenge the teachers experienced was to develop a case scenario that reflected a real-life clinical situation and a set of questions that guided students to progress in step-by-step sequence. Other key concerns reported were time-consuming in creating a specific case scenario, several revisions and testing usually required before a case scenario could work as planned; difficulty to make case scenarios just right in level of difficulty and complexity for every student; and difficulty to have enough time to discussion.
Conclusions. The results suggest that teachers need adequate preparation and groundwork before they can create and design case scenarios that are efficiency in enhancing students’ critical thinking.