Une activité d'élaboration d'hypothèses pour soutenir le développement du RCI d'étudiantes en sciences infirmières
Teaching and learning clinical reasoning has been a major concern amongst nurse educators for many years. Hypothesis generation is a critical milestone in clinical nursing reasoning which students are still struggling with at the end of their program. In a qualitative exploratory study, we tested a vignette-based activity to provide to the students an opportunity to specifically practice hypotheses generation. The study aimed at documenting nursing student’s capacity to formulate hypotheses during the activity. Seventeen nursing students in the last semester of their program were recruited by convenience and grouped accordingly to their availability to participate. The activity was held four times. Participants were asked to focus on a brief clinical vignette and to build an algorithm that would include 1) their hypotheses regarding the nature of the problem, 2) the essential pieces of information to collect in order to verify each hypothesis, and 3) the way the information was to be found. The combined methods used for data collection were participative observation, videotaping the activity and a written questionnaire immediately after the activity. Data were then classified in matrices in the form of verbatim and notes using clinical nursing reasoning skills described by Fonteyn (1998) as the theoretical framework. Results suggest that the vignette-based activity does stimulate students to formulate hypotheses. It also stimulates sharing and recollection of knowledge amongst students. This type of activity could therefore be useful in promoting the development of clinical reasoning as a complement to other educative activities used in nursing education programs.
Clinical nursing reasoning Hypothesis generation Competency based approach