Abstract
wangensteen s., johansson i.s., björkström m.e. & nordström g. (2010) Critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses. Journal of Advanced Nursing66(10), 2170–2181.AimThe aim of the study was to describe critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses in Norway, and to study whether background data had any impact on critical thinking dispositions.BackgroundCompetence in critical thinking is one of the expectations of nursing education. Critical thinkers are described as well-informed, inquisitive, open-minded and orderly in complex matters. Critical thinking competence has thus been designated as an outcome for judging the quality of nursing education programmes and for the development of clinical judgement. The ability to think critically is also described as reducing the research–practice gap and fostering evidence-based nursing.MethodsA cross-sectional descriptive study was performed. The data were collected between October 2006 and April 2007 using the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory. The response rate was 33% (n= 618). Pearson’s chi-square tests were used to analyse the data.ResultsNearly 80% of the respondents reported a positive disposition towards critical thinking. The highest mean score was on the Inquisitiveness subscale and the lowest on the Truth-seeking subscale. A statistically significant higher proportion of nurses with high critical thinking scores were found among those older than 30 years, those with university education prior to nursing education, and those working in community health care.ConclusionNurse leaders and nurse teachers should encourage and nurture critical thinking among newly graduated nurses and nursing students. The low Truth-seeking scores found may be a result of traditional teaching strategies in nursing education and might indicate a need for more student-active learning models.
Highlights
Graduate nurses must be critical thinkers with the ability to manage complex situations (Worrell & Profetto-McGrath 2007), and it is expected that nursing education will allow students develop critical thinking dispositions (Daly 1998)
No statistically significant differences were found between the study sample and the respondents in the drop-out analysis with respect to university college education or healthcare experience prior to nursing education concerning background variables (Table 3)
In this study we focused on critical thinking dispositions among newly graduated nurses in Norway and relationships between the background data and critical thinking dispositions
Summary
Graduate nurses must be critical thinkers with the ability to manage complex situations (Worrell & Profetto-McGrath 2007), and it is expected that nursing education will allow students develop critical thinking dispositions (Daly 1998). Critical thinking was defined in a Delphi report as a process of purposeful, self-regulatory judgment which results in interpretation, analysis, evaluation and inference (Facione 1990). The WGCTA is the one most used in nursing (Videbeck 1997, Banning 2006), it is not specific to nursing (Sedlak 1997) It consists of 80 questions divided into five subscales: inference, recognition of assumptions, deduction, interpretation and evaluation of arguments (Girot 2000). The WGCTA is reported to assess general reasoning skills rather than the discipline-specific thinking learned in a nursing programme (Walsh & Seldomridge 2006)
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