article · Medicine
Critical thinking is essential for effective clinical practice, yet nursing education often lacks targeted strategies to foster these skills. This study evaluated the effectiveness of a cognitive-behavioural reflective training programme designed to enhance the critical thinking disposition of nursing students. A cohort of 167 students was divided into an intervention group receiving therapist-led training delivered in English and a waitlisted control group. Although initial post-test assessments revealed no significant difference between the two cohorts, subsequent post-treatment and follow-up evaluations demonstrated sustained improvements in the critical thinking disposition of participants who received the training. The findings suggest that structured reflective training grounded in cognitive-behavioural principles provides lasting benefits in developing critical thinking attitudes among nursing students.
Developing strong critical thinking skills is vital for healthcare professionals to make sound clinical judgements and improve patient care. Demonstrating that cognitive-behavioural reflective training can sustainably enhance these dispositions offers nursing schools and clinical educators a structured method to better prepare trainees for complex healthcare environments.
This research presents an applied and tested training intervention that could be adapted by nursing schools, healthcare education providers, and hospital staff development units. Because it was delivered directly by therapists within a study setting, the programme remains at an academic trial stage. Moving towards wider use would require standardising the curriculum into modular training materials or digital learning tools for clinical educators.
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BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVE: The importance of critical thinking in improving treatment practices in, for instance, the nursing profession, cannot be overemphasized. Despite this importance, empirical studies have shown that helping strategies to train learners on critical thinking disposition are needed. Given this knowledge gap, this study investigated the impacts of cognitive-behavioral reflective training for improving the critical thinking disposition of nursing students. METHOD: Of all the students screened, a total of 167 participants were assigned to the treatment group and waitlisted control group. A researchers-developed training program aimed at improving critical thinking disposition was delivered in English language by therapists. RESULTS: Repeated-measures ANOVA showed that there was no significant difference between the critical thinking disposition of nursing students in the treatment and control groups as measured by CTDI-M at the posttest. At the posttreatment and follow-up measures, there were consistently improved impacts of CBRT on the critical thinking disposition of nursing students in Nigeria as measured by CTDI-M. CONCLUSION: Following the results, we concluded that cognitive-behavioral reflective training was beneficial and had sustained improvement in enhancing the critical thinking disposition of nursing students.
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DOI: 10.1097/md.0000000000022429
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