Exploring The Effectiveness Of PBL In Abdominal Surgical Nursing

BackgroundIt was identified by American medical field that there were some deviations and crisis in medical education in 1920s. As the medical knowledge increased dramatically, students were overloaded to remember all the information and neglected the clinical practice. Besides, the text-based and teacher-centered instructional method made students lack active learning's desire. Thus Barrows established Problem-based learning at McMaster University in 1969. Despite many scholars had stated that PBL had more advantages than conventional teaching method, it was still ambiguous in the effectiveness of PBL on students' knowledge and critical thinking. In addition, there were few nursing schools to employ PBL and evaluate the effectiveness of it by a combination of questionnaire and group interview in Chinese mainland. Therefore this study was intended to determine the effectiveness of PBL by PBL assessment form, group interview and comparing the outcomes between PBL and traditional groups in terms of professional knowledge and critical thinking disposition in abdominal surgical nursing.ObjectiveTo evaluate the effectiveness of PBL on students' knowledge and critical thinking disposition. And to explore the students' perspectives on PBL.MethodsQuasi-experimental design was employed. Nursing baccalaureate students enrolled in 2004 served as control group while the students enrolled in 2005 treated as experimental group. Before experiment, the baseline in demographic, grades of basic science and critical thinking disposition were compared. Then one group received PBL, and the other group undertook lecture-based learning. At the end of the term, professional knowledge and critical thinking disposition were compared between two groups, and group interview was used to explore students' perspectives on PBL.ResultsThere were no significant differences in baseline between two groups. After intervention, it still showed no significant difference in students' professional knowledge between two groups. Critical thinking disposition, however, demonstrated opposite trends between two groups as PBL group had a great increase and control group made a decrease especially in cognitive maturity and open mindedness (P <0.05). Furthermore, there was a dramatic difference in cognitive maturity and open mindedness between two groups (P <0.05).The problem solving and team collaboration scored higher than other dimensions while motivating learning got a lowest score. From students' perspectives, PBL contributed to developing problem-solving skills, self-directed learning, team collaboration and to extending their knowledge. But it failed to show positive effect on students' learning motivation and made the knowledge fragmental which had a negative influence on students to learn all the facets of professional knowledge.Conclusion1. PBL is more effective to develop students' cognitive maturity and open mindedness than traditional instructional method.2. PBL promotes problem-solving skills, self-directed learning and team collaboration, facilitates deep learning and helps to extend knowledge. However, it could make the knowledge lack of systematism and may get down learning motivation. Due to the misarrangement, students were overloaded in this study. Consequently, it could counteract even worsen the effectiveness of PBL. So we should take a cautious look at the outcome of suppressing the learning motivation.