Date
11-13-2024
Department
School of Nursing
Degree
Doctor of Philosophy in Nursing (PhD)
Chair
RuthAnne Kuiper
Keywords
Clinical reasoning, clinical judgment, nursing education, clinical teaching strategies, Tanner’s Clinical Judgment Model
Disciplines
Nursing
Recommended Citation
Condren, Tiffany, "Effectiveness of Clinical Reasoning Reflection Prompts to Develop Clinical Judgment in Prelicensure Nursing Students: A Quasi-Experimental Study" (2024). Doctoral Dissertations and Projects. 6200.
https://digitalcommons.liberty.edu/doctoral/6200
Abstract
The development of clinical judgment is an important topic in nursing education, and various teaching strategies have been proposed to improve this skill among nursing students and new graduate nurses. However, the effectiveness of these strategies is not well-researched. One promising approach is using higher-order questions to guide and develop the thought patterns of clinical reasoning. One suggested teaching strategy is using clinical reasoning reflection prompts based on Tanner’s Clinical Judgment Model. This study aimed to evaluate the efficacy of using clinical reasoning reflection prompts in the patient care setting to develop clinical judgment among 35 pre-licensure nursing students within a private Midwest BSN nursing program. This quantitative study employed a quasi-experimental pretest-posttest design to measure changes in clinical judgment, measured by Lasater’s Clinical Judgment Rubric (LCJR) and the National Council State Board of Nursing Clinical Judgment Measurement Model (NCJMM). The pretest-posttest data using a two-tailed paired sample t-tests, and a correlation point-biserial coefficient test, was analyzed using the SPSS statistical platform. The findings revealed significant improvements in students’ clinical judgment behaviors, demonstrated by increased LCJR scores and improved performance on NCJMM-based NCLEX questions. The results of this study support the effectiveness of structured, model-based reflection as an effective clinical pedagogy to develop clinical judgment and help inform nursing education teaching and assessment practices to close the academic-practice gap. Future studies should focus on expanding the study to larger populations and exploring additional teaching strategies to further enhance the development of clinical judgment.
