Discussion: How can nurse educators encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment in clinical education and the traditional classroom or clinical setting?
Discussion: How can nurse educators encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment in clinical education and the traditional classroom or clinical setting?
Learning Environment
Discussion 1
Nurse educators should encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment in clinical education or clinical settings. Nurse educators can achieve the outcomes by adopting several strategies. One of them is encouraging reflection. Nurse educators should encourage and guide students to incorporate reflective practice into their learning. Reflection will help students to learn from their experiences and explore strategies to improve their performance in diverse areas of practice (Bezanilla et al., 2019). Reflective practice will also transform their behaviors, as they constantly seek for new opportunities for personal and professional growth.
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The other strategy that nurse educators can use to encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning and judgment in clinical education or settings is the use of high order questions. High-order questions are complex questions that demand the use of advanced cognitive processes by the students. The questions help students to think beyond the literal concepts learned in the classroom or clinical settings (Shirazi & Heidari, 2019). Students develop the desired critical thinking, clinical reasoning and judgment skills since they constantly apply, analyze, synthesize, and evaluate data to make decisions rather than recalling information.
The last strategy that nurse educators can use to encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and judgment is concept learning. Concept learning is an educational approach that encourages learners to acquire and organize data or information to create meaning and promote efficiency. Concept learning helps students to understand complex issues, which enhances their learning outcomes. Students also develop deeper understanding of how to transfer knowledge into real-life situations, thereby, expanding their critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and judgment skills (Bezanilla et al., 2019). One can differentiate the above strategies based on the situation exposed to the students. For example, reflective practice can be used in both classroom and clinical settings to encourage discovery of new knowledge. However, concept learning is applicable to classroom settings, as the students are being exposed to new concepts that inform their practice.
References
Bezanilla, M. J., Fernández-Nogueira, D., Poblete, M., & Galindo-Domínguez, H. (2019). Methodologies for teaching-learning critical thinking in higher education: The teacher’s view. Thinking Skills and Creativity, 33, 100584. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.tsc.2019.100584
Shirazi, F., & Heidari, S. (2019). The Relationship Between Critical Thinking Skills and Learning Styles and Academic Achievement of Nursing Students. The Journal of Nursing Research, 27(4), e38. https://doi.org/10.1097/jnr.000000000000030
Discussion 2
Several barriers can be experienced when teaching students critical thinking skills. One of them is lack of practice. Critical thinking requires students to apply the skills acquired in their daily routines. Lack of practice affects the acquisition of the desired knowledge and skills for critical thinking. The other barrier is normalcy bias. Normalcy bias affects the use of critical thinking skills since students tend to believe that things will remain unchanged or will work according to their expectations(Li et al., 2019; Persky et al., 2019). Normalcy bias predisposes students to make decisions with emotions rather than facts, affecting the acquisition and use of critical thinking skills.
The other barrier that can be experienced when teaching critical thinking is groupthink. Group thinking makes students to confirm to the values and beliefs of others as a way of avoiding to be perceived as different. Groupthink also predisposes students to opinion-based reasoning rather than fact-based thinking that is based on the use of critical thinking skills. Nurse educators can explore some strategies to promote critical thinking skills in their students. The strategies include the use of simulations, case studies, reflective writing, encouraging self-awareness, and use of structured approaches in issue analysis and decision-making. Strategies such as the use of simulations help nursing students to advance their abilities to respond effectively to different situations in their professional roles(Persky et al., 2019). Self-awareness helps them to understand their unique abilities, strengths, weaknesses, and opportunities they should explore to advance their decision-making abilities.
References
Li, S., Ye, X., & Chen, W. (2019). Practice and effectiveness of “nursing case-based learning” course on nursing student’s critical thinking ability: A comparative study. Nurse Education in Practice, 36, 91–96. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.nepr.2019.03.007
Persky, A. M., Medina, M. S., & Castleberry, A. N. (2019). Developing Critical Thinking Skills in Pharmacy Students. American Journal of Pharmaceutical Education, 83(2). https://doi.org/10.5688/ajpe7033
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Each discussion board must be at least 250 words with at least 1 peer reviewed source within the past 5 years.
Dicussion 1: How can nurse educators encourage critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment in clinical education and the traditional classroom or clinical setting? How can you differentiate these instruction pieces for various educational or clinical settings?
Discussion 2: What are common barriers when teaching critical thinking skills? What strategies can nurse educators use to better promote critical thinking skills in students?