Background: Critical thinking (CT) is essential to the exercise of professional judgment. As nurses face increasingly complex health-care situations, critical thinking can promote appropriate clinical decision-making and improve the quality of nursing care.
Objectives: This study aimed to evaluate the effects of a program of case studies, alone (CS) or combined with concept maps (CSCM), on improving CT in clinical nurses.
Design: The study was a randomized controlled trial. The experimental group participated in a 16-week CSCM program, whereas the control group participated in a CS program of equal duration.
Methods: A randomized-controlled trial with a multistage randomization process was used to select and to assign participants, ultimately resulting in 67 nurses in each group. Data were collected before and after the program using the California Critical Thinking Skill Test (CCTST) and the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI).
Results: After the programs, there were significant differences between the two groups in the critical thinking skills of analysis, evaluation, inference, deduction, and induction. There was also an overall significant difference, and a significant difference in the specific disposition of open-mindedness.
Conclusions: This study supports the application of case studies combined with concept maps as a hospital-based teaching strategy to promote development of critical thinking skills and encourage dispositions for nurses. The CSCM resulted in greater improvements in all critical thinking skills of as well as the overall and open-minded affective dispositions toward critical thinking, compared with the case studies alone. An obvious improvement in the CSCM participants was the analytic skill and disposition. Further longitudinal studies and data collection from multisite evaluations in a range of geographic locales are warranted.
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