Iran Journal of Nursing

   Authorities of nursing believe that the ability to think critically by nurses play an important role in providing individual care, solving problems and making complex decisions. Therefore, critical thinking ability is to be established during scientific experiences in nursing students and to be promoted in employed nurses.

 Determining and comparing critical thinking abilitys in first and last term baccalaureate nursing students and clinical nurses, a descriptive - comparative study was carried out in which 172 contributors, selected with stratified random sampling method filled up self reporting questionnaires.

  Findings revealed that 98.3% of clinical nurses, 94% of last term students and 93% of first term students were weak in critical thinking abilities, besides, there were significantly differences between nursing students and clinical nurses in average scores of inference (p<0.0001), interpretation (p=0.026), evaluation of arguments (p<00.01), and also, total scores of critical thinking abilities. In other words, differentiated aspects of critical thinking ability had higher levels in student nurses. Furthermore, we did not find significant differences between students and clinical nurses from the point of diagnosis of assumption and deduction abilities.

  To Conclude, regarding findings, although last term students had been involved in a 4 years nursing education curriculum, they were the same with the first term students from the point of their critical thinking abilities, and also, inspite of 2 years of clinical nursing experiences in nurses, their critical thinking abilities were significantly lower than students. So, revising present educational strategies and applying active learning method, both in theory and practice seems to be critical, and regarding clinical nurses, participating in problem solving and decision making situations is of great importance, and for both groups individual patient care with the basis of nursing process will promoted knowledge, attitude, skills and motivation, which all will promote critical thinking abilities consequently.