Nursing students' view of critical thinking as 'Own thinking, searching for truth, and cultural influences'.

Introduction: Students should enhance their ability to think critically as part of a process of whole-person development.

Background: Within nursing education, students should employ critical thinking to ensure quality of patient care and patient safety.

Aim: The aim of this study was to explore the perspectives of nursing students on critical thinking.

Design: A descriptive qualitative study.

Methods: This was a focus group study involving 65 nursing students from one school of nursing. A total of eleven focus group interviews were conducted. The semi-structured interview guideline was used. All interviews were audio recorded, transcribed in Chinese and translated into English. Thematic analysis was adopted.

Results: Three themes centred on critical thinking were discerned: own thinking, searching for truth, and cultural influences.

Conclusions: It is suggested that future studies be conducted on how these factors might affect critical thinking. In addition, multiple nursing schools could become involved in these studies to obtain rich data and enrich the picture of students' views on critical thinking. If nurses have more time to think about what is going on, they could think critically about what they are actually doing. This would help to protect the safety of patients and to reduce the occurrence of medical accidents.