Staff development story: Concept mapping: a staff development strategy for enhancing oncology critical thinking.

Abstract

Developing innovative educational programs to advance practice in a clinical research setting is challenging for educators. Varieties of learners coexist within each practice development setting, ranging from novice to expert nurses. Each nurse needs to find value in the content he or she is learning and be able to apply this knowledge in the clinical setting. Applying didactic content to the clinical setting while incorporating critical thinking and meaningful learning is especially important. Educators must consider dynamic and innovative teaching–learning strategies when developing programs to ensure that they are meeting the course participants’ needs. Concept mapping is a logic model that requires the learner to analyze data, determine relationships between concepts, review problems and issues, evaluate the correlations, and determine the nursing actions. Concept mapping was proposed by Novak and Gowin as a learning strategy in 1984 and was based on the method originally developed in 1972 as part of Novak’s research (Novak & Gowin, 1984). Using concept mapping in the learning process promotes a higher level of thinking and development of skills, such as generation of ideas and decision making (Beitz, 1998). The concept map can be used for a variety of reasons: (a) to have a greater understanding of a patient/disease process and care provided, (b) to design additional practice development programs, and (c) to serve as an evaluation tool to measure program outcomes (Anthony & Higgins, 2006). By using a logic model, the learner is able to view various aspects of the process and the cause-andeffect associations to enhance critical thinking in practice (Ellermann, Kataoka-Yahiro, & Wong, 2006). Academic settings frequently employ concept mapping in place of the traditional care plan; however, there is limited literature on using concept mapping in the staff development setting. Concept maps incorporate all the elements of the nursing process but enhance it by allowing learners to visually map specific aspects of care into a cohesive whole (Glendon & Ulrich, 2004). Concept mapping allows adult learners to apply critical-thinking strategies when creating a particular map, just as one would personalize a patient care plan (Luckowski, 2003).