الفهرس 
CRITICAL THINKING
The cognitive psychological approachOnly 14 pages are availabe for public view
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Abstract
Critical thinking is an active and organized mental
process essential for scientific thinking. Acquiring this ability
should be one of the most important goals in one’s life as it
enables to evaluate, compare, analyze, critique, and synthesize
information. It is essential to both effective learning and
productive living. Critical thinking disposition is a consistent
internal motivation to act toward or respond to persons, events,
or circumstances in habitual, yet potentially malleable way,
with a tendency to use ones critical thinking skill. Nursing
internship training is the most critical period in the professional
life of a graduate. It should enhance nurse interns’ critical
thinking.
This study aim was to study the effect of nursing
internship training program on the critical thinking dispositions
of nurse interns through assessing critical thinking dispositions
of nurse interns at the beginning and after the internship year
and comparing between the two pre/post internship program
assessments.This pre-post evaluation study was conducted at Ainshams University Hospitals. A convenience sample of 140
nurse interns was selected from the nurse interns enrolled in
internship program in these settings. A self-administered
questionnaire sheet was used to collect data. It comprised a part
for socio-demographic data, and the California Critical
Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) to assess the critical
thinking of nurse interns. The tool was reviewed by seven
experts in the area and specialty, and pilot-tested for reliability.
The fieldwork was in December 2012 and July 2013.
The main study findings were as follows.
The nurse interns’ age ranged between 20 and 25 years
with mean 22 years, with slightly more females (60%)
and a majority having general pre-university education
(90%).
The scores of the different domains of critical thinking
disposition were generally high mostly exceeding 75%
of the maximum score. The lowest score was in
systematicity (72.0%) while the highest was in analycity
(84.2%). The total mean percent score was 77.2%.The scores of male nurse interns were statistically
significantly higher in maturity (p=0.005), and tended to
be higher in self-confidence (p=0.09).
No relations of statistical significance were revealed in
nurse interns’ scores of critical thinking and their age,
pre-university type of education, grades of academic
performance, and the department of training.
The nurse interns with urban residence tended to have
higher inquisitiveness (p=0.08) and total critical thinking
(p=0.07) scores but the differences did not reach
statistical significance.
The results showed statistically significant increases in
the scores of all critical thinking disposition domains at
the end of the internship program (p<0.001). The highest
improvement was in the domain of maturity which
increased by 7.3 points.
In total, the mean gain in critical thinking disposition
score after the program was 43.4 points.
Overall, 59 of the nurse interns had low critical thinking
disposition at the start of the internship program,compared with only 1 nurse intern at the end of the
program (p<0.001).
Statistically significant moderate to strong correlations
were revealed among nurse interns’ scores of critical
thinking disposition at the start of the program. At the
end of the program, these correlations decreased in most
domains.
At the end of the program statistically significant weak
negative correlations were shown between nurse interns’
grades and their scores of systematicity (r=-0.223) and
total critical thinking disposition (r=-0.177).
The best fitting logistic regression model for nurse
interns’ critical thinking disposition identified the
internship program was the only statistically significant
positive predictor of the improvement.
In conclusion, the nurse interns in Ain-shams University
Hospitals have generally high scores of critical thinking
disposition at the start of the internship program, with males
having better maturity scores. The internship program is the only significant positive predictor of the improvement in nurse
interns’ critical thinking disposition.
Based on the main study findings, it is recommended
that the nurse internship programs should give more emphasis
on enhancing the critical thinking disposition of the nurse
interns, especially the domains of inquisitiveness and selfconfidence through training sessions and workshops. Female
nurse interns and those from rural residence need more
fostering of their critical thinking disposition. Further research
is needed in this area given the paucity of local related
literature. Intervention studies are suggested to assess the
effectiveness of different educational approaches in enhancing
nurse interns’ critical thinking disposition.