Anxiety and Critical Thinking Skills in Nursing Students

Background and Purpose: Critical thinking skill is one of the important goals of nursing education and its promotion is considered one of the expected outcomes of university studies. Thus recognition of its facilitators and barriers is an important step toward increasing the quality of nursing education. The current study was conducted to investigate critical thinking skills disposition and the relationship between anxiety and critical thinking skills in nursing students.

Materials and Methods: This descriptive analytical study was conducted on all nursing students of Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery in Amol, affiliated to Mazandaran University of Medical Sciences, Iran. The samples were selected by census method of all students studying in the second semester of academic year 2013. The research instruments used in critical thinking skills test were Watson-Glaser Critical Thinking Appraisal (A) and the Spielberger’s state anxiety inventory.

Findings: In this study, the mean and standard deviation of critical thinking and anxiety score of all students were (M=44.38, SD=5.60) and (M=33.22, SD =5.31) that indicates poor critical thinking skills and moderate downward anxiety in these students. In this study, correlation between anxiety and the score of students’ critical thinking was significant (P=0.001 and r=–0.672).

Conclusion: The results of the current study showed poor critical thinking skills in nursing students and significant inverse correlation between anxiety and critical thinking skills such that individuals with low anxiety compared to individuals with high anxiety had more desirable critical thinking.