Critical Thinking: The Development of an Essential Skill for Nursing Students

Abstract

Critical thinking is defined as the mental process of actively and skillfully perception, analysis, synthesis and evaluation of collected information through observation, experience and communication that leads to a decision for action. In nursing education there is frequent reference to critical thinking and to the significance that it has in daily clinical nursing practice. Nursing clinical instructors know that students face difficulties in making decisions related to clinical practice. The main critical thinking skills in which nursing students should be exercised during their studies are critical analysis, introductory and concluding justification, valid conclusion, distinguish of facts and opinions, evaluation the credibility of information sources, clarification of concepts and recognition of conditions. Specific behaviors are essentials for enhancing critical thinking. Nursing students in order to learn and apply critical thinking should develop independence of thought, fairness, perspicacity in personal and social level, humility, spiritual courage, integrity, perseverance, self-confidence, interest for research and curiosity. Critical thinking is an essential process for the safe, efficient and skillful nursing practice. The nursing education programs should adopt attitudes that promote critical thinking and mobilize the skills of critical reasoning.

Effectiveness of teaching strategies on the development of critical thinking in undergraduate nursing students: a meta-analysis

“…CT should not be confused with intelligence; instead, it should be understood as a skill that can be taught (4) by developing logical and consistent thinking (5) that involves both cognitive and behavioral components (6) . Critical thinking has been much discussed in nursing literature (8)(9)4) , and is considered one of the most important concepts in education (10) . Several studies (3,7,(10)(11) have emphasized the importance of preparing educators to teach CT skills through implementing active and innovative teaching strategies.…”

Effects of Middle East Respiratory Syndrome Coronavirus on post-traumatic stress disorder and burnout among registered nurses in South Korea

“…Critical thinking is essential to recognize problems and perform appropriate nursing care for health outcomes. [40] Consequently, the RNs with symptoms of PTSD in our sample could have difficulty performing their critical thinking process to provide quality healthcare for the patients at the hospital during the MERS-CoV outbreak.…”

Construction of an index system for qualitative evaluation of undergraduate nursing students innovative ability: A Delphi study

“…Critical thinking is regarded as higher-level thinking and reasoning skills that facilitate thinking in a controlled, purposeful, focused and in a conscious way when making decisions (Simpson & Courtney, 2002). Papathanasiou, Kleisiaris, Fradelos, Kakou, and Kourkouta (2014) showed that managing nurses should encourage colleagues to scrutinise the data prior to draw conclusions and to avoid 'group thinking' which tends to vary without thinking of the will of the group. Nurses should use critical thinking to reconstruct their knowledge and theoretical system to cope with this challenge (Chan, 2013a(Chan, , 2013b.…”