Question

Do you agree or disagree with the following statement? Defend your position. "…concept mapping has found a useful place in nursing education as an alternative strategy to the linear, rote organization of information in the traditional nursing care plan. …"

Answer 1

Nursing students in graduate and undergraduate classes are asked to create concept maps or mind maps around a central concept or idea. A proposition is about one or more concepts. Concept mapping and mind mapping are used in science education.

A concept map is a type of graphic organizer used to help students organize and represent knowledge of a subject. Concept maps begin with a main idea and then branch out to show that main idea can be broken into specific topics.

Concept maps are graphical tools for organizing and representing knowledge. They include concepts, usually enclosed in circles or boxes of some type, and relationships between concepts indicated by a connecting line linking two concepts.

The art and science of modern nursing encompasses fundamental nursing concepts that include health, illness, stress and health promotion. They provide preventive, primary, acute and chronic care for sick and injured patients with health information, restorative care, medication administration and emergency care.

Concepts maps are a way to organize and represent complex ideas and processes. When students generate concept maps they need to identify the key parts of an idea, process and then show how they relate to one another.

A nursing care plan provides direction on the type of nursing care the individual community may need. The care plan is the documentation of this process. It includes a set of actions the nurse will apply to resolve or support nursing diagnoses identified by nursing assessment.

Nurses when care for patients they need the nursing process, which includes making a plan and setting goals for the patient. Nursing interventions are the actual treatments and actions that are performed to help the patient to reach the goals that are set for them.

Concept mapping, as a teaching strategy, has worthy outcomes in nursing education. They provide valuable evidences to integrate concept mapping as a continuous teaching strategy in nursing educational programs. Transiting students are passive to active learners, establishing new knowledge, improving cognitive abilities, and developing clinically competent nurses.

Concept maps incorporates self-learning techniques and students learned how to acquire knowledge independently and empower themselves to function in the professional setting.

Concept mapping is able to enhance students autonomous in completing a relatively unstructured assignment. Concept mapping is successfully applied in classroom setting, and students perceive it positively.

The important current review is the improvement of cognitive abilities among nursing students. This is supported and revealed that concept mapping is a predictor of students abilities to understand psychoses as a complicated disorder. A qualitative study interviews have found that concept mapping is a challenging learning approach and developing new cognitive skills.

Nursing students used concept mapping showed no increase in their critical thinking disposition in their post-test scores. It is very important to implement concept maps gradually and it is suggested to integrate it with traditional lectures.

The review related that students abilities to be more competent nurses in their clinical areas, and were appreciated with their abilities to integrate the learned knowledge in clinical settings, and they creatively drawn concept maps for their patients including nursing care plan for each patient. The nursing students felt satisfied and experienced positive attitude toward clinical simulation and scenarios after utilizing concept maps in their clinical training.