critical thinking test on a job interview

Zookeeper3 · May 19, 2012

In school, you have been exposed to critical thinking in the form of those dreaded care plans. They PRIORITIZE care. That is similar to critical thinking skills. An example of it is below:

you walk into a patient room, they are SOB, breathing over 40x's a minute, pale with dusky lips.... what do you do?

A new nurse might suggest, call rapid response or the doctor or the charge nurse.

Critically thinking would be, sit the patient up, pull the call bell out the wall, do a 60 second assessment, and instruct the first person to respond to enact the facility emergency response.

Having done rapid response, I frequently show up to this same scenerio, a code has been called, the patient is laying flat, no nurse in the dark room, no code cart, oxygen being set up and the primary nurse is no where to be found and no one can locate the chart.

does that make sense? You don't have to fix the patient, you need to know basic steps to troubleshoot and act until either more information is obtained or you have a few minutes to take basic actions.

Think care plans and you should do fine! Best of luck.

LadyinScrubs, ASN, RN · May 19, 2012

Has anyone ever had to have a critical thinking test on a job interview? They stated no math or medications. Does anyone know of any books or websites to study up on what they might ask?

The problem is you have no idea what test they are using, if it is standardized or if they just made one up. ATI has a critical thinking test that many nursing schools require their students to take. Allegedly, it is a good predictor of passing the NCLEX. However, if a student or nurse has never been exposed to this type of test question or if the test is not standardized, it shows nothing. Do a search on line or with Amazon for a good (used) nursing critical thinking book. Do the questions and review the answers as well as the rationale. It will expose you to the types of questions that these critical thinking tests require as well as prepare you for the test (if your facility uses the standard nursing critical thinking test).

luvpets · May 20, 2012

Thank you everyone. The place that I will be interviewing at is for home health.