Importance of Critical Thinking in Health Science

Developing strong critical thinking in students is a challenging goal widely embraced by health science education stakeholders at every level, including employers, policy makers and faculty.

Health Science programs around the world use the Health Science Reasoning Test (HSRT), HSRT-AD and other Insight Assessment test instruments to assure that their applicants are prepared to engage in rigorous educational programs and achieve professional licensure as nurses, physician, dental hygienists, physician assistants, occupational therapists, pharmacists and speech therapists.

Health Science programs use critical thinking admission data for retention and student success initiatives, to prescreen applicants and to identify and support at risk students.  Successful programs use Insight Assessment health science tools to:

• identify promising applicants with the critical thinking and numeracy skills to successfully complete professional health science programs.  Comparison to national comparison groups for specific graduate and undergraduate programs supports admissions, documents outcomes at exit and demonstrates that graduates have the skills employers and the public demand.
• screen program applicants for the fundamental mindset attributes valued in health care professionals as well as the reasoning skills needed for academic success.
• provide students with comprehensive online individual reports analyzing the strengths and weaknesses in their thinking skills.
• improve graduation rates by targeting retention and success programs on identified areas for improvement in critical thinking skills and motivation.
• establish institution specific admissions threshold scores after completing multi-year programs to screen applicants at admissions for the critical thinking skills and mindset attributes needed for learning and for professional success.

Objective critical thinking data is extensively used to link institutional accreditation with the achievement of learning outcomes and curriculum evaluation. Insight Assessment customers use comprehensive reports to:

• benchmark the scores of their incoming undergraduate and graduate health science students in dentistry, medicine, dental hygiene, nursing, occupational therapy, pharmacy, physical therapy, and physician assistant programs students’ performance against program-specific HSRT percentile scores.
• demonstrate excellence in diagnostic reasoning in graduating students in all clinical and public health related programs.
• carry out campus wide learning outcomes assessment projects as a component of Quality Enhancement Programs.
• gather objective, data on the decision skills of graduating students. This data is used for their respective school’s professional accreditation purposes, to contribute to the upcoming campus-wide self-studies, and to establish school-specific admissions criteria.
• predict licensure of students entering health science professional fields.

Students who demonstrate that they are both willing and able to think critically have the best chance for success academically and professionally. For more than 30 years  health science educational institutions have relied on Insight Assessment critical thinking assessments to provide the validated, research proven report data they need to admit and graduate students who demonstrate the critical thinking skills and mindset to rise to this level of professional practice.

Make sure your programs graduate students have the problem-solving skills and clinical reasoning mindset to achieve success in health science careers,

Focus on critical thinking as an essential learning outcome for your health care education program.

Contact us to learn the benefits of using Insight Assessment’s array of objective multilingual tools for the evaluation of decision making at the professional, graduate, undergraduate, and two-year college level.