Assessment of critical thinking skill among senior student nurses

Critical thinking skill is one of the components of clinical decision making and criteria for clinical competency of nursing professionals and students and also valuable factor to develop nursing professional autonomy. In attention to unsuitable results of prior researches and importance of critical thinking ability in nursing and effect of culture on it, further studies about critical thinking skill ability in nursing students are needed. This study was carried out to determine of critical thinking skills ability among senior nursing students in Sabzevar University of medical science. This research is a descriptive study. 35 subjects were selected by simple sampling from senior nursing students (7th & 8th semester). Data were collected by questionnaire in two parts: demographic variables and B form California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). After approval ethical and explain necessity of survey, questionnaires distributed among Sabzevar University of medical science nursing students. The data were analyzed by SPSS17. Average of critical thinking skills score was 10. 49±2. 60 with maximum 15 and minimum 5. Also, all participants (100%) had poor critical thinking skills. There were significant differences between variant domains of critical thinking skills (p<0.001). There were no significant statistical relationship among prior semesters average scores and critical thinking skills scores (r=0.02) and students age and critical thinking skills scores(r= 0.06). Critical thinking ability in all participants was weak and no one achieve to minimum critical thinking score. Hence we must train students with high critical thinking skills ability in twentieth century; and this topic must be put in colleges’ curriculum