Degree Name
Nursing Practice, DNP
Publication Date
9-30-2025
First Advisor
Lisa Drake
Abstract
Nursing education is at a crossroads as the demand for practice-ready nurses increases in a rapidly evolving healthcare environment. Despite high licensure pass rates, graduates often demonstrate gaps in clinical judgment and critical thinking, key competencies for safe nursing practice. This project addressed the problem of limited structured strategies to develop these competencies among pre-licensure nursing students in a Houston-based nursing program. The purpose was to evaluate guided reflection, implemented as a competency-based education (CBE) tool, to determine its effect on faculty perceptions of supporting critical thinking and clinical judgment. A quasi-experimental, one-group pretest–posttest design was conducted with clinical faculty (n = 6). Guided reflection, structured with Gibbs’ Reflective Cycle, was incorporated into post-conference sessions, and faculty perceptions were measured with the Teaching Critical Thinking Inventory–Adapted (TCTI-A). Results showed significant improvement from pre- to post-intervention. Welch’s t-test indicated a significant difference, t(5.80) = –3.05, p = .024, with a large effect size (d = 1.76). The Mann–Whitney U test further validated these findings, U = 3.00, z = –2.44, p = .015. Guided reflection was shown to be an effective, sustainable, and cost-neutral CBE strategy to strengthen faculty practice in promoting critical thinking and clinical judgment and better prepare graduates for safe, high-quality patient care.
Rights Management
This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License
Recommended Citation
Wheat, Alissa, "Quality Improvement Project Unlocking Critical Thinking: The Use of Guided Reflection in Nursing Education" (2025). Doctor of Nursing Practice Projects. 230.
https://arch.astate.edu/dnp-projects/230
