The relationship between Blended Learning in Clinical Nursing Process and Critical Thinking Skills in Nursing Students; A Quasi-Experimental Study

Nurses need to think critically to provide effective care. They use critical thinking skills (CTS) every day to care based on the nursing process (NP). Caring and CT are at the core of professional nursing education. The aim of the study was to determine the relationship between NP blended learning methods and CT.

This study was a quasi-experimental cross-sectional educational evaluation, which was performed on 26 undergraduate students in their third semester at the Ramsar School of Nursing in 2022. According to the training program, these students were divided into four groups. Data were collected by the checklist of NP scores and California Critical Thinking Skills Test; form-B before and after a two-phase, six-day intervention with blended learning.

The paired t-test showed that except for the stage of review and recognition, this difference was significant for other states and the total score, which indicates the effect of the blended method on learning clinical NP in students. Before training, 95.7% of students had strong CT, which reached 100% after training. A significant relationship was observed between the total score of the second stage of clinical NP and deductive reasoning after training (p=0.04). There was no significant relationship between the total score of clinical NP and the total score of CT before and after training.

Blended learning methods should be considered in nursing curricula, and it seems that traditional methods cannot be successful in learning NP and CT.