The critical difference assignment: an innovative instructional method.

Nurse educators are faced with the challenge of developing and evaluating learning methods that promote knowledge acquisition, problem solving, and the development of clinical judgment to meet today's expectations of new graduates. Clinical judgment is at the heart of decision making and drives nursing action. It encompasses perceptions and intellectual processing of information through mental operations of reasoning, resulting in appropriate actions. An instructional method, entitled the Critical Difference Assignment, aimed at developing clinical judgment has been developed and piloted at a southwestern university. This instructional method requires students in small groups to engage in intellectual processing of case study information using mental operations of reasoning to discriminate between two case studies through a process of comparing and contrasting the data.