Nursing faculty are committed to helping students acquire a huge body of facts (and their scientific underpinnings) and the ability to synthesize and apply these facts to practice in a variety of health care settings.   Faced with these demands, faculty commonly revert to pedagogy that relies on the presentation of information via lecture, PowerPoint®, and overhead transparencies.  When faced with this type of pedagogy, students take furious notes, memorize disparate facts and “cram” at the last minute for examinations.  These strategies may allow students to pass comprehensive and/or licensure examinations, but do not promote the acquisition of either scholarly or life-long learning skills.

Students who have been educated with passive learning strategies may struggle when they matriculate in graduate nursing education programs that rely on self-directed learning.  Clinicians who never honed their analytic skills may have difficulty moving from traditional technical, fact-based clinical practice to higher level professional practice incorporating intuition, analysis and critical thinking.

The revision of a Medical-Surgical nursing course in a baccalaureate curriculum in the USA is described.  The course modification includes the retention of content presentation for a portion of each class period, followed by problem-based learning activities.  Strategies for holding students accountable for pre-requisite information and class preparation are described.  Student and faculty response to the modified course, as well as initial evaluation data will be presented.  Plans integrating clinical simulation and critical thinking activities into the clinical component of the course will be explored.