Reflective thinking in clinical nursing education: a concept analysis

Abstract

Over decades nursing had an interest in clarifying and developing its knowledge base and its conceptual foundation. Reflective thinking has become a popular word in nursing education world wide, but its meaning and effective use remains debatable because of lack of clarity in its meaning (Mackintosh, 1998:553). The researcher engaged in the concept analysis of reflective thinking so as to fully understand its meaning and interpretation, hence the research question to be addressed by this article is: “What is the meaning of reflective thinking in clinical nursing education?”