I once heard a nursing professor tell their students that they would encounter three C’s in nursing school: caffeine, care plans, and critical thinking.
Today’s blog is focused on the final C—critical thinking—because it can be so difficult to teach and because I really liked this worksheet that I found on Flickr. Whenever my colleagues and I host Kaplan’s “Critical Thinking Seminar” at nursing programs, students often tell us that they wish they would’ve learned the steps to critical thinking in the first semester of nursing school. My response is usually something along the lines of “if I drop dead in this lecture, I want you to know what to do in order to revive me, NOT just formulate a reason why I dropped dead.” This usually gets a laugh, which is important to the active learning process, but it also helps to remind them of the knowing versus thinking balancing act that they’re required to perform in nursing school.
Hopefully you can put this resource to good use whenever a student struggles with their “balancing.” I think this resource could be particularly powerful for those students who just want to memorize facts, like correct test answers, but who then struggle with applying that knowledge on a differently worded question. For example, if a client has an O2 sat of 85%, one test question might ask what you would do first. A correct answer could mean giving the client O2, but on another test question, if it stem states that a patient is not breathing, then selecting O2 as an answer choice would not work since the patient has to be breathing for the oxygen therapy to work. A student who only wants to memorize is not thinking critically and they would not likely select the correct answer as a result.
Since there aren’t always absolutes on exam questions or nursing content, whenever a student is struggling with the concept, ask them student to answer Step 3—Application “do you know of another instance where __?” and Step 4—Analysis “what evidence can you present for __?” to help show them the light.
Please let us know if this was helpful to you, or if you have any other suggestions for implementing this handout when teaching critical thinking.
