The impact of nursing education curriculum and workforce preparation on students’ critical thinking, moral reasoning and evaluate their perspectives on cultural sensitivity in UAE

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Date
2020-08
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The British University in Dubai (BUiD)
Abstract
Background: Critical thinking is a vital element in developing competent and safe nursing practice. The danger of incorrect nurse’s decisions on the patient’s health has become a significant threat for both the nursing students and graduates. Almost half of the nurses leave their careers at the current culturally sophisticated healthcare settings as a consequence of facing daily moral distresses and ethical dilemmas after their wrong clinical judgment. Purpose: is to investigate the impact of the nursing education curriculum and workforce preparation on students’ existing critical thinking (CT) and moral reasoning (MR) skills within the BSc nursing curriculum. Moreover, to examine the quality of clinical decision making among the UAE nursing students within culturally competent care. Design/ Methodology/ Approach: The researcher employed a concurrent mixed study with both qualitative and quantitative mechanisms. The quantitative data was collected from (103) participants from three nursing cohorts in the UAE, using the California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST). The questionnaire was used to investigate the participants critical thinking with the moral reasoning and cultural sensitivity quality and present their (Interpretation, Analysis, Inference, Explanation, and Evaluation) scoring. The qualitative data collected from the semi-structured focus group interviews was drawn on to investigate critical thinking, moral reasoning, and cultural sensitivity perception and preparation of the participants. Results: Results of the data confirmed an increase in nurses critical thinking abilities when education and practice enhanced. Nursing curriculum, workplace, cultural diversity, and moral dilemmas contributed to shaping the UAE nurse's critical thinking skills while clinical experiences impacted positively on improving the nurse's decision-making and clinical judgment. Regarding the correlation between domains of CCTST, the results showed a significant positive correlation between overall domains and analysis, inference, evaluation, induction, and deduction variable at p-value < 0.01. In addition, there was a significant positive correlation between analysis, induction and deduction. Adding to that, the results revealed that there was a high correlation between induction and all domains at p-value <0.01 except with the deduction domain. Furthermore, a significant correlation between deduction and overall, analysis and inference domains has been shown at p- value <0.01.The applications for nursing education and clinical practices were discussed. Based on the findings, recommendations for nursing education and clinical nursing leaders were deliberated. Future research should include a larger sample size from both genders to study more perspectives within the UAE multicultural environment.
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Keywords
Health education -- Study and teaching., moral reasoning, moral distress, cultural sensitivity, United Arab Emirates (UAE), nursing curriculum, UAE nursing students, multicultural environment
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