Nurses must learn how to address clinical challenges in collaborative and innovative ways. Many new nurses experience difficulties in transitioning from mastery of individual clinical skills to daily interactions with a multi-disciplinary team using effective communication and creative problem-solving (Huston et al., 2018). To address this issue, four multi-disciplinary instructors integrated a human-centered design thinking (DT) process into an undergraduate nursing Honors course to encourage the use of innovation and collaboration for clinical problem-solving (Roberts, Fisher, Trowbridge, & Bent, 2016). The goal was to teach students to work together in teams using a five-step process of DT (empathize, define, ideate, prototype, test) and evaluate their attitudes towards this method of collaboration for problem-solving (Banerjee & Gibbs, 2016). Course instructors modeled collaborative innovation and teamwork, and promoted team-based problem-solving (Wosinski et al., 2018). The DT intervention included assignments requiring students to: 1) interview patients and clinicians to gain empathy, 2) explore clinical problems, and 3) work in teams to identify possible solutions.
Methods:
To evaluate students’ attitudes towards DT as collaborative innovation, researchers used a qualitative approach emphasizing how students learn through interaction with others (Creswell & Poth, 2018). On the first day of class, pre-test surveys were distributed to 23 students with questions about how students defined innovation, generated new ideas, approached problem-solving, and worked in teams. On the last day, post-test surveys were distributed with questions about students’ future approaches to problem-solving, changes to their ideation process, and attitudes about teamwork. Responses were uploaded into NVivo Pro 11. Two researchers independently performed descriptive and pattern coding to determine themes, and the entire research team met to gain consensus (Miles, Huberman, & Saldana, 2014).
Results:
Response rates for the pre- and post-test surveys were 91% and 87%, respectively. Four themes emerged from student pre- to post-responses. First, students transitioned from defining innovation as either a noun or adjective related to change, to defining innovation as a verb, referring to the DT process. Second, students initially approached problem-solving by seeking the advice of others, using available resources, or stepping away to reflect on the issue, but they shifted to collaborating with others to identify potential solutions. Third, students moved from generating new ideas spontaneously or working to find a single solution to being more confident in collaborating with others and not fearing failure. No notable differences were noted in overall attitudes towards working in teams. However, students revealed the benefits of learning others’ perspectives and ideas but also noted challenges in workload distribution among teams, conflicts in team dynamics, and issues with coordination of activities.
Conclusion:
The first semester of implementing DT revealed that undergraduate nursing students could learn to view innovation as a process and become more emboldened to work with others to solve clinical problems. Although they did not show drastic attitude shifts regarding teamwork, students became more open to collaboration. Future research is needed to evaluate the impact of DT training on student nurses’ transition to professional practice and approach to problem-solving in the multi-disciplinary clinical setting.