| Learning Objective #1: Discuss the relationship of critical incidents to critical thinking in clinical practice | |||
| Learning Objective #2: Analyze themes of critical thinking in clinical practice |
A phenomenological study examined senior baccalaureate student nurses' actual incidents experienced during clinical learning and characterized the incidences using professional nurses' clinical practice role themes. Although educators in all disciplines share a general interest in developing students' ability to think critically, nurse educators are especially challenged because they must prepare their students to perform technical, interpersonal, and critical thinking skills simultaneously. In addition, students must learn to function as safe, competent, and skillful clinical practice nurses in a complex health care environment in which new information and clinical situations continually emerge.
The interpretive phenomenological study examined student nurses' recorded personal clinical incidents triggering critical thinking processes during senior clinical nursing courses. The learning strategy model serves as a framework for nurses to critically analyze actual situations encountered during their clinical practice experience. Stephen Brookfield's four components of critical thinking and culturalization themes, that relate to how nurses learn and experience critical thinking, serves as the organizing framework for the model. Students cited a diversity of critical incidences clustered around professional clinical practice role themes. The five themes included: Caregiver (nursing interventions, nursing process, communications, theory based practice, ethics, bio/psycho/social influences); Manager (decision making, collaboration); Advocate (quality care, resource utilization, collegiality); Research (critical analysis); and Professional (standards of care, code of ethics, practice regulations, self-directed learning).
The clinical practice incidences triggering students’ critical thinking processes and identified professional role themes is one way to address nurses’ practice needs. This learning strategy has implications for all nurse educators because it incorporates the realities of nursing practice, merges nursing education with practice, and involves students in affective, cognitive, and psychomotor domains of learning.
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Sigma Theta Tau International
10-12 July 2003