Improving critical thinking in novice nurses

Many teaching methods used in nursing education to enhance critical thinking focus on teaching students how to directly apply knowledge; a technically rational approach. While seemingly effective at enhancing students' critical thinking abilities in structured learning situations, these methods don't prepare students to operationalize critical thinking to manage the complexities that actually exist in practice. The work of contemporary educational theorists Paulo Freire, Donald Schon, Chris Argyris, Jack Mezirow, Stephen Brookfield, and Robert Tennyson all share similar perspectives on thinking in practice and the use of reflection to achieve a coherence of understanding. Their perspectives provide insight on how nurse educators can shift from a means-end approach to operationalizing thinking in practice. After analyzing the work of these theorists, the author generated common themes that demonstrate four core attributes of critical thinking: reflection, context, dialogue and time. These attributes were incorporated into an educational intervention to qualitatively study how to operationalize critical thinking in nursing practice.; The specific aim of this qualitative case study was to determine if the contextual learning intervention would enhance novice nurses' critical thinking skills over time during the first six months of their practice as evidenced by the nature of their dialogue, writing and respondent interviews. Using Stake's case study methodology, novice nurses participated in a six-month reflective contextual learning intervention. The data analysis for this case study was guided by specific questions focused on understanding the impact of the contextual learning intervention on the nature of the novice nurses' reflection, dialogue and perspectives on context and time. Analysis involved searching for patterns and the consistency of those patterns across time and subjects helping the researcher to understand critical thinking as it related to the effects of the contextual learning intervention. Through the stories shared by the novice nurses, the case study analysis findings revealed that involvement in the contextual learning intervention had a positive impact on the development of critical thinking in practice. The case study analysis illustrates that the contextual learning intervention, as an educational process, operationalized critical thinking in practice.