A Study on Clinical Reasoning Ability and Academic Achievements in Nursing Students

The purpose of this study was to verify clinical reasoning of nursing students as well as clarify the relevance between clinical reasoning and academic achievement. 87 students broke into 30 groups of two or three.The students performed post operative care for adult patients in the simulation practicum course of their final semester. Data were collected by evaluating the video-recorded nursing practicum using the clinical reasoning rubric.Clinical reasoning of 61(70.1%) students was limited to the beginning level and that of 6(6.9%) students of the highestscoring was at the third level among the four levels of ability. There was no significant correlation between clinical reasoning and the final cumulative GPA, while there was low level of significant correlation between clinical reasoning and GPA of adult health nursing course or adult health nursing practicum course. Therefore, it is necessaryto improve the nursing curriculum to enhance nursing students’ clinical reasoning.