Concept Mapping to Teach Clinical Reasoning

As nurse educators, we are challenged to prepare students to manage rapidly changing and increasingly complex health care environments. Effective patient care requires the nurse’s ability to recognize subtle patient cues, prioritize problems, act decisively, and evaluate outcomes through clinical reasoning. However, new graduate nurses often fall woefully short in these areas, indicating that traditional teaching methods are insufficient. So how do we teach this critical skill? There is some evidence that using concept mapping can improve clinical reasoning skills. I have used concept mapping in a summer nursing elective I developed with a colleague. The students showed definite improvement in clinical reasoning and the ability to see the bigger picture in patient care. Often our traditional care plans are very linear, focusing on only one or maybe a few issues. Concept maps, on the other hand reveal the relationships between problems giving a broader view of patient care. In the course, my colleague and I used a concept map constructed in Word with multiple text boxes for the students to fill in. For one of my Personal Learning Goals, I am investigating other forms of concept mapping that could be used collaboratively with groups of students. Dr. Smolka suggested I look at Bubbl.us and Cacoo.com. So let's take a look.

The first one I checked out was Bubbl.us  It looked interesting, but I would either have to sign up for a free trial or pay. I've had enough free trials lately, and I certainly didn't want to pay, so I kept looking. I found a great tool in Mindmeister.com  

Not only is the mapping tool easy to use, it has a tutorial to guide you, and a good online help library. It also has some impressive features, like the ability to create a presentation right from your concept map. You can also add pictures, emoticons, and even videos! Another great aspect is the ability to broadcast your map to collaborators, even the ability to set up a team that can work together in real time. Each team member has a different color and can chat with each other as they work. You can also invite other people to view your concept map via email.Your concept map also can be shared to Twitter, published, or even embedded or linked to a website or blog. Here's a link to my first concept map in MindMeister  You can email invitations to view your concept map. You can even add a personal message and decide if they can only view it, or if they can edit. You can also save it as a pdf and if you upgrade ($) you can share presentations. Pretty cool!  

I also checked into Cacoo.com which is free to use.

The concept map itself is more colorful and easier to read, in my opinion. It also has icons you can add, but it is a little hard to figure them out. You can purchase more at the Cacoo store, and I found quite a few that were free. You can also resize them, but the categories are odd. And some icons that are shown in color only come in black and white. Constructing the concept map was a little harder - not quite as user friendly as MindMeister. It also allows collaboration with chat in real time, and you can save your concept maps as pdfs or various other files and can link to URLs. Although you can create presentations, it's hard to figure out how. You can email invitations to people to view your concept map and/or edit it, and it can be published on the web. Here's my first venture with Cacoo using the same topic:

If you want to see it on the Cacoo site then Click Here

And finally, here is my original concept map in Word:

I honestly think it is easier to create and therefore less time is spent on making it pretty and more time understanding the content. I'll have to ask my students, but unless they know how to use Cacoo or MindMeister, it is another technology platform to learn. That being said, Millennials love technology, so maybe that wouldn't be an issue!

Maryanne