Background: Health care today is presented with a complex set of circumstances requiring exploration of new and varied teaching methodologies to produce requisite student reasoning and prepare them for professional practice. Health care practitioners require high-level clinical reasoning skills to practice, skills traditionally achieved through clinical experiences. Purpose: The purpose of this study was to explore the impact of a community service learning clinical experience on the clinical reasoning skills of pre-licensure nursing students. Methodology/Approach: A sample of junior-level nursing students was recruited and given the Health Science Reasoning Test pre-test. Participants then completed a community service learning clinical experience, after which they took a post-test and completed a reflective journal entry. Findings/Conclusions: Quantitative data analysis was inconclusive due to limitations. Qualitative data analysis suggested that clinical reasoning skills were affected and identified major themes (communication, holistic care, and knowledge and skills). Implications: Community service learning clinical experiences have the potential to enhance clinical reasoning skills and should be further evaluated for inclusion in today’s nursing programs.

Background: Nursing faculty continually seek new teaching strategies to promote prelicensure nursing students' critical thinking. Students construct new knowledge through experience. Esthetic learning methodologies involve gaining knowledge and insight through emotive, firsthand experiences. The esthetic experience of watching a movie, coupled with reflective journaling, has been used with health care students to promote learning. However, little is documented in the literature on its use with nursing students or its influence on the formulation of critical thinking skills. Method: This descriptive qualitative study explored the impact of watching the movie, Sully , followed by structured reflective journaling on critical thinking of prelicensure nursing students. Results: Themes were identified which demonstrated students' insights into the components of critical thinking and expert thinking. Conclusion: Esthetic learning is a promising teaching approach that addresses multiple ways of knowing, thereby enhancing students' learning about critical thinking in a prelicensure education program. [ J Nurs Educ . 2021;60(5):281–285.]

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Background: Grades often are an unreliable means of determining content mastery due to poor grading systems and grade inflation. The use of a modified definitional grading system may be beneficial for assessing mastery of content in competency-based education in didactic nursing courses. Method: This mixed-methods pilot study examined grade-related data and survey results. Purposive sampling was used to recruit prelicensure freshman nursing students ( n = 84) enrolled in a didactic nursing course. The aims were to explore student content mastery in a prelicensure didactic nursing course that used a modified definitional grading system and to evaluate course design elements well-suited for use with competency-based education. Results: Quantitative data showed improved individual and overall examination scores but did not significantly affect students' final course grade. Three themes emerged: motivation and diligence, stress, and highlighting of student weaknesses. Conclusion: A modified definitional grading system has the potential to add value and meaning to grades, improve study habits, and improve content mastery. [ J Nurs Educ . 2023;62(4):215–223.]

Nurse educators can enhance students' clinical judgment by providing cues to guide decision-making during simulation. The purpose of this experimental feasibility study was to evaluate the effectiveness of using the National Early Warning Score as a set of cues during high-fidelity simulation to guide students in the development of clinical judgment, resulting in early detection of patient deterioration. Differences in clinical judgment scores and speed of detection of patient deterioration between groups of junior-level nursing students trained in the use of National Early Warning Score versus those who were not were evaluated. No significant differences were detected between the groups; however, valuable lessons were learned.