A Study On Exploring Clinical Nurses' Perception Of The Connotations Of Critical Thinking

ObjectivesThe purposes of this study were to clear the connotation of critical thinking in nursing through thoroughly probe into clinical nurses'perception of the connotations of critical thinking, and then to provide reference for the nursing education.MethodsTwenty clinical nursing teachers were invited to attend the in-depth interviews. The outline of the interviews referenced a critical thinking content framework of an American nursing specialist Scheffer. The themes were formed by category analysis. In order to verify the validity, a total of 205 clinical nurses from 3 general hospitals in Zhejiang province were invited to complete the questionnaires about cognition of critical thinking. Descriptive statistic analysis was used to analyze the result.ResultsAfter in-depth interviews, the understanding of the connotations of critical thinking in nursing was summarized. The content of critical thinking in nursing included three dimensions, which were knowledge, skills and attitudes. Knowledge contained professional theoretical knowledge and experiential knowledge. Skills contained discriminating, analyzing, reasoning, predicting, evaluating and reflecting. Attitudes contained initiative, responsibility, confidence, inquisitiveness, flexibility, creativity, open-mindedness, perseverance and intuition. After investigation and verification, the result gained recognitions from above 80 percents of the clinical nurses. ConclusionsThrough in-depth interview and questionnaire survey, this study gained the connotations of critical thinking in nursing. We clarified that critical thinking in nursing was a combination of knowledge, skills and attitudes. It was a scientific thinking method, a logical thinking process and a questioned habit of thinking. The results of this study would be conducive to guide nursing education.