Teaching Complex Trauma Care in a Curriculum Challenges Critical Thinking and Clinical Judgment—How Nurses Can Help

Abstract

Incorporating complex content into a nursing curriculum presents students with the knowledge and thinking skills necessary to enter a career in nursing. A level 1 trauma center is a prefect environment to advance these thinking skills. Nurses act as professional role models and teachers as they clarify and explain their thinking to a student. When experienced nurses show invitational behaviors to students and share their knowledge with them, they ignite a strong desire within the student to progress. Caring, communication, and inclusion are key components that synergize the teaching/learning experience. The development of critical thinking is a continuous process that is best achieved through collaboration between the student, faculty, and professional, experienced nurses.

Management of intra-abdominal hypertension and abdominal compartment syndrome: a review

“…Advanced practice nurses possess superior assessment and decision making skills, critical thinking and communication expertise that is imperative in an often unpredictable critical care environment [40]. Advanced nursing practice allows expert nurses to demonstrate increased clinical discretion, responsibility and autonomy when recognising, assessing, and managing patients with IAH or ACS [41].…”

Convergence Factors Influencing Clinical Practice Satisfaction of Nursing Students

“…Hence, teaching nursing students to think critically or challenging them to think is one way to cultivate their metacognitive ability. This skill should help them to recognize their limitations, change their learning strategies, and monitor their thinking to improve their performance in the ever-changing health care environment [11,12]. Nursing students must use a variety of mental processes, such as critical inquiry, reasoning, judgment, and creativity, to solve problems and apply procedures or therapies [13][14][15][16].…”

Metacognitive Inventory for nursing students in Taiwan: instrument development and testing

“…In today's complex and ever-changing healthcare environment, nurses must be prepared to analyze large amounts of information critically so that they can weigh up the evidence supporting, and arguments for or against, particular issues or procedures (Toofany 2008). Teaching nursing students to think critically remains a key answer to the challenge (West et al 2007) for promoting critical thinking rather than rote memorization. In other words, nursing students are challenged to think and learn in a way that will prepare them for practice in a complex healthcare environment.…”