molidean

The question is: What do YOU mean by critical thinking? In my research I find that managers and new nurses define the term quite differently. Managers think in terms of good outcomes, nurses tend to think in terms of protocols and tasks. Neither are critical thinking and an emphasis on either will not achieve what is wanted. A person who can gather and process information; communicate and justify decisions. If you use case studies without teaching them how to explicitly gather all the information (internal as well as external resources) needed, weigh the risks, conduct cost/benefit analysis of various alternatives and evaluate their decision making process, you are teaching them to memorize protocols.

I research this field and am interested in tools as well. I have developed a tool that goes with my theory and evaluation method. The main problem with CT is that most nurses mean clinical judgment and not critical thinking when they use the term. CT is gathering and processing information. It is needed for all disciplines and daily decision making. CT is rarely explicitly taught where as clinical reasoning details the type of information to gather and the method of processing information for a clinical decision. We teach all sorts of frameworks for this task.