The think aloud approach as an educational tool to develop and assess clinical reasoning in undergraduate students

Even though clinical reasoning is attributed with the expert practitioner, there is limited evidence to support methods of teaching and learning that are used to foster its development in nurses. In nursing, a considerable range of teaching and learning strategies are available that can be used to develop clinical reasoning skills. This includes the think aloud seminar. This process oriented method has been successfully used to develop reasoning skills in nursing students [Lee, J.E.M. and Ryan-Wenger, N. 1997. The think aloud seminar for teaching clinical reasoning: A case study of a child with pharyngitis. J. Pediatric Health Care 11(1), 105-110.] and is one that should be adopted by nurse educators as a core teaching and learning strategy when educating pre-registration student nurses. (C) 2007 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.