Assessment of Clinical Reasoning in B Sc Nursing Students

Today nurses are facing clinical situations that are very complex and challenging due to various reasons. To ensure high quality patient care, nurses must be able to quickly analyse clinical situations and make best clinical judgement on time. The aim of this study was to measure the clinical reasoning skills of B. Sc. Nursing students so that an awareness regarding their ability to make accurate and appropriate clinical judgement become possible. A descriptive survey design was used to explore the clinical reasoning skills of sixty Fourth Year B Sc Nursing students of a selected college of nursing in Kerala by using Script Concordance Test (SCT). The mean scores obtained for clinical reasoning was 24.58. None of the students were having good clinical reasoning skill. Students having moderate and poor clinical reasoning were 53.33 % and 46.67 % respectively. No significant association was found between clinical reasoning and variables such as gender and academic performance. The study reveals that the student nurses lack clinical reasoning skills irrespective of their academic performance. Hence nurse educators have to identify and adopt innovative teaching learning strategies that promote critical thinking, reflection and clinical reasoning.