Advancing the science of research in nursing education: contributions of the critical decision method.

Advancing the science of nursing education will require the discipline to conduct research that investigates complex phenomena, such as students' clinical thinking and decision-making skills, using multiple methods. The research methods developed in other disciplines can provide nursing education researchers with new ways to investigate clinical teaching and learning in nursing. The critical decision method (CDM), derived from psychology and human factors engineering, is a technique by which researchers elicit experts' thinking and the cognitive work informing decision making in the context of practice.