Toward critical thinking as a virtue: The case of mental health nursing education.

Abstract

Critical thinking in nursing is largely theorized as a clinically-based idea. In the context of mental health education, this presents a problem, given documented evidence of a shift to demedicalize mental illness. Using institutional ethnography, this article examines the critical thinking of nursing faculty in a baccalaureate nursing program in a Canadian university by way of focus group interviews, observation periods, and the analysis of a number of institutional and legislative texts. The findings suggest that the critical thinking of nursing faculty is caught within a constrained institutional-textual order. Drawing on critical theory and Foucauldian philosophy, recommendations for nursing education are made in order to diversify and extend critical thinking in mental health nursing.