Nurse educators’ perceptions on facilitating reflective thinking in clinical nursing education

Abstract

This article seeks to publish the results of nurse educators with regard to how reflective thinking of learners can be facilitated in clinical nursing education. The results were obtained through a perception survey using an agenda focus group in the second phase of an original study whose aim was to develop a model to facilitate reflective thinking in clinical nursing education. A qualitative, exploratory and descriptive study, which was contextual in nature, was conducted. A concept analysis of reflective thinking was conducted based on the principles described by Wilson (1963:23-39) and Gift (1997:75-76). These results (unpublished) were used to guide the perception survey of nurse educators on how reflective thinking can be facilitated in clinical nursing education. An 'etic' approach to qualitative data analysis was used (Morse, 1994:166-167), and categories were placed in the matrices as described by Miles & Huberman (1994:241-243). The results revealed empowerment of the learner through different teaching strategies, assessment and evaluation methods, and the supporting attitudes in accordance with the three phases of the reflective thinking process. Trustworthiness was assured by adhering to Lincoln and Guba's (1985:290) principles such as credibility, transferability, confirmability and dependability. It is recommended that a model to facilitate reflective thinking in clinical nursing education be developed with guidelines to assist nurse educators with the implementation of the model.