Defining critical thoughts

Nursing education has long struggled to define critical thinking and explain how the process of critical thinking fits into the context of nursing. Despite this long time struggle, nurses and nurse educators continue to strive to foster critical thinking skills in nursing students as intuitively most nurses believe that critical thinking is necessary to function competently in the workplace. This article explores the most recent work of Dr. Stephen Brookfield and ties the concepts which are explored in Brookfield’s work to nursing practice. Brookfield identifies that learners understand the meaning of critical thinking the best when the process is first demonstrated. Role modeling is a method educators can use to demonstrate critical thinking and is a strategy which nurses often use in the clinical area to train and mentor new nursing staff. Although it is not a new strategy in nursing education, it is a valuable strategy to engage learners in critical thinking activities.