The Effects of Nursing Education on Critical Thinking of Students: A Meta-Analysis

AIM: The present study was aimed at investigating the effect of nursing education on the improvement of students’ critical thinking skills in Turkey by using the meta-analysis method. METHOD: The literature screening was carried out in online databases using the keywords “nursing”, “student”, “critical thinking”, “Turkey” in English and their Turkish equivalents “hemşirelik”, “öğrenci”, “eleştirel düşünme”, “Türkiye” respectively. Quantitative studies matching the inclusion criteria were included in the study. The number of the participants in those studies was 3792 (2183 first-year students and 1609 last-year students). For the analysis of the data, the CMA (Comprehensive Meta-Analysis Software) statistical package program was used. While the Q and I2 tests were used to test the homogeneity of the studies, the Classic Fail-Safe N test and Kendall’s Tau were used to test their publication bias. Fixed and random models were used to calculate the effect size. RESULTS: The results indicated that 10 studies met the inclusion criteria, and that the studies included in the study were heterogeneous and had no publication bias. The mean effect size was 0.114 at the 95% significance level [CL=0.087–0.440]. CONCLUSION: The results of the study indicated that nursing students were not able to develop their critical thinking skills and that there is a need for implementations to develop their critical thinking skills. This study will provide guidance for nursing school administrators and educators to develop critical thinking skills of nursing students.