Postgraduate Critical Care Nursing Students’ Experiences of Team-Based Learning

Judy Currey PhD, Paula Eustace PhD, Elizabeth Oldland Grad Dip Adv Nsg, Julie Considine PhD, David Glanville MN, Ian Story PhD, Faculty of Health, Medicine, Nursing and Behavioural Sciences, Deakin University, Melbourne, Australia

Team-Based Learning (TBL) was introduced in the second half of a one year postgraduate program for critical care nurses. Previously, the content of program was delivered by standard didactic lectures, with some informal small group work during lecture time. The aim of this study was to qualitatively evaluate postgraduate critical care nursing students’ experiences of TBL.

 An exploratory descriptive study was conducted. An open-ended questionnaire was used to ascertain students’ experiences of TBL. All 32 students responded to the questionnaire. Data were analysed thematically. Trustworthiness was established using peer debriefing to review data and search for disconfirming evidence and thick description.

Findings indicated that students developed a professional identity through TBL. That is, TBL facilitated deep learning that transformed students to critical care nurses. Four main subthemes were identified: Learning Effectiveness, Motivation to Learn, Critical Thinking, and Engagement. Through TBL, students were highly motivated to acquire the knowledge, skills and attitudes associated with specialist critical care practice. Students reported they had acquired higher order critical thinking skills and they felt more prepared for critical care clinical practice. As a consequence, students felt valued and rewarded by their peers, medical colleagues and educators in both the clinical and academic environment.

Contrary to past experiences, postgraduate critical care nursing students adopted the professional identity of being a critical care nurse surprisingly early, having completed only two-thirds of their course. Team-Based Learning was found to be a transformative process for accelerating students’ self-actualisation as specialist critical care nurses, thereby enhancing their sense of professional reward and value.