Pages: 7

This introductory chapter discusses why healthcare students require critical skills and the importance of evidence-based practice.

Pages: 9

This chapter should help you consider the critical thinking skills you already have, as well as clarifying where you require further development. Beginning with an audit of your current abilities, it focuses on how you have used critical skills in your everyday life. Finally, it demonstrates how you can use popular issues and the media to begin honing your skills and your ability to identify flaws and logical problems.

Pages: 13

Having considered the critical skills you utilise in everyday life, this chapter moves on to critical approaches in your academic work and how you can transfer those same skills to university. First, it considers what lecturers mean when they ask for critical thinking, before unpicking some common misconceptions. It considers surface approaches to assessments and healthcare topics comparing them to deeper, more critical positions. This will allow you to recognise the difference and ensure you adopt the latter attitude in your own work.

Pages: 21

The most obvious place to begin taking a critical approach in your university work is with your reading. The best students and healthcare practitioners are critical readers, so this chapter focuses on this particular skill. Beginning with less academic texts, critical questions are introduced as a way of appraising the value and credibility of sources of evidence. This same technique is then applied to research papers, graphs and other scholarly literature. This chapter considers the use of critical appraisal frameworks and provides tools to assist students in synthesising literature – bringing together the themes and findings of several, different sources.

Pages: 11

Having undertaken critical research on a particular topic, you are expected to synthesise what you have discovered – formulate your own credible and well-supported argument rather than simply regurgitate what you have read. This chapter discusses how you go about constructing an argument and working out your critical take on issues. The strongest arguments hold up to scrutiny because there is sufficient quantity and quality of evidence underpinning them. A thorough understanding of how arguments are constructed is, therefore, essential if you are to ensure this is the case with your own. This skill is also helpful when evaluating the arguments of others. It allows you to deconstruct the issue and highlight any logical problems or inconsistencies. Both skills are covered in this chapter.

Pages: 14

Critical thinking is necessary in every aspect of your studies and your professional clinical practice. You demonstrate that critical approach in your assessments, usually through your writing. In my experience, many students are proficient critical thinkers and readers, but they fail to show this criticality within their work and thus do not gain high marks. This chapter specifically addresses that issue – demonstrating critical thinking in your writing. It begins by examining the building blocks of academic writing and structure, before moving on to the features of critical writing. It then investigates how you can best demonstrate a critical approach in assessments such as exams and presentations.

Pages: 13

Many assessments in the later years of a degree involve literature reviews, either as a stand-alone piece of work or as an introductory section of a dissertation or paper. This kind of assessment requires many of the skills you have been developing through the course of this book – critical engagement, questioning and selecting resources, for example. It is a unique type of assessment, however. It is all too easy to fall into the trap of taking a descriptive or superficial approach to the literature. This chapter begins by defining literature reviews before detailing the distinct stages involved in the process of writing one. Finally, it examines how to ensure a critical synthesis when writing literature reviews.

Pages: 13

Almost every degree programme involves the development of an extended piece of coursework, often called a dissertation. This is usually undertaken in the latter stages of your programme, when you have developed an in-depth knowledge of the field, advanced clinical skills and experience and a wealth of critical skills. These will all be necessary to write such a complex and independent assessment. Through this book, you will have been practising and honing the latter group of skills, and you will require them throughout the dissertation process. The design of the question, the review of literature, the research and the write-up all require critical evaluation. This chapter considers the tasks involved in writing a dissertation, the importance of planning, using feedback effectively and making the most of your supervisor. It also provides hints on remaining critical and suggests a technique for staying focused and developing your academic writing.

Pages: 9

Reflection and reflective writing are both important aspects of modern healthcare practice. You will be expected to undertake reflective activities at every stage of your education and career. Many of the subsequent written pieces of reflection will be assessed as part of your coursework. As with other assessments, a critical approach is necessary to lift your thinking and writing above mere description or regurgitation. In reflective work, you have to be critical in your attitude towards the subject matter, reading and theory, but it is also essential that you are able to fully critique your own actions, feelings and attitudes. This chapter examines the basics of reflection and reflective writing and discusses ways of ensuring you achieve a critical perspective.