In this instructional video, the presenter explains how nursing students can develop critical thinking skills essential for success in nursing school and clinical practice. She breaks critical thinking into two core components: (1) Planning ahead – ensuring all necessary supplies are ready before entering a patient’s room and continuously anticipating the next steps of care, and (2) Connecting the dots – understanding a disease’s pathophysiology and linking it to the patient’s signs and symptoms, nursing assessments, and interventions. To operationalize these ideas, she introduces the DRC Critical Thinking model (Definition/Description, Reason/Rationale, Connection). Using a myocardial infarction (heart attack) as a concrete example, she demonstrates how to fill out each DRC section: a brief definition, the underlying pathophysiology (reason), and the integration of signs/symptoms, assessment findings, and nursing interventions (connection). She also explains how the model adapts to studying medications, clinical skills, and other topics. Throughout, she promotes a free critical‑thinking cheat sheet, her Nursing SOS courses (which provide pre‑filled DRC templates for various disorders), and encourages viewer interaction via comments, subscriptions, and future videos. The overall message is that mastering planning ahead and the DRC framework will transform rote memorization into true clinical reasoning, leading to better grades and patient care.
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In this video, I'm gonna walk you through exactly how to critically think in nursing school. Isn't it so annoying that when you get to nursing school, all of your professors expect you to start critically thinking, but nobody tells you what that actually means? I'm gonna break it all down for you. Super simple, so you can start thinking critically right away. Now hit that subscribe button and click the notification bell and let's dive in. There are two main parts to critical thinking in NURS nursing school. You've got planning ahead and connecting all the dots. We'll walk through how to do both of these things, but I first want to mention that I have a free critical thinking cheat sheet for you that walks you through it as well, so make sure to download that. The link is down below in the description. Now let's dive into planning ahead first. Planning ahead means that you have all of your supplies before you walk into a patient's room. I mean, for real, how often have you gone into a room and not had what you needed? Like a thousand times, right? So planning ahead ensures that you're not going to forget anything you need. Planning ahead also means that you're always assessing your patient and thinking about the nursing care that you'll need to do next. You're always planning your next steps and how you're going to help the patient get better. If you want to deep dive into planning ahead as well as some tips for how to make it easier, be sure to check this video out. So planning ahead tends to be the easier one of these two. Connecting the dots is really where the magic of nursing happens. Let's talk about what it means first, and then I'm going to show you exactly how to do it. Connecting the dots or putting all of those puzzle pieces together means that you understand the disease or the disorder your patient has, and you're able to understand how that relates to the signs and symptoms they're experiencing, your nursing assessment and the nursing interventions that need to do so. You're not just going to memorize the list of things you need to do for a patient who had a heart attack, for example. You're actually going to understand the pathophysiology of it and then how that relates to the signs and symptoms they're experiencing, as well as the nursing assessment and the nursing interventions that you need to do for that patient. Nursing school is not about just memorizing facts, my friend. Every patient and every situation is different, so you need to be able to tie it all in to your of your assessment data and everything going on with the with the patient and make nursing decisions based on that. This, my friend, is critical thinking. Now, of course, I'm not just going to tell you what critical thinking is. That wouldn't be very helpful. I'm going to show you exactly how to do this. I created a critical thinking model to help make nursing school way easier for you. But before we get into it, I want to give a shout out to Black dahlia for our YouTube comment of the week, which said, we need you as an instructor. Thank you. This video was very helpful. Students say that a lot. But honestly, friend, I love my sweatpants too much. And I'm pretty sure your nursing school would frown upon an instructor always wearing their jammies to teach. But thank you so much for the compliment and for your support, friend. I am super glad that this video helped you out and keep your comments coming. They really help me to know what what topics that you want to see more of. So leave your topic requests in the comments down below. I always love chatting with you. Now, as promised, let's dive into the critical thinking model. It's called the DRC Critical Thinking model, and here's how it goes. The D stands for definition or description. The R stands for reason or rationale, and the C stands for connection. Using this DRC critical thinking model is going to be the difference between getting an A on your exam and getting a C. You have got to understand how to critically think in order to pass your exams and succeed at clinical. So let's walk through what each of these three parts means, and then we'll go through an example to help it really come to life for you. The D stands for description or definition. So what is it? What is it that you need to know about? What's the description of it? This is very high level. All you'll do here is write out the definition or the description of whatever you're studying. Now, the second part is is the R, which stands for the reason or the rationale. This is where you'll write about the why, why does it happen? Or why does it matter? And the third part is really where you connect all of those dots and that's the C connection. This is where you'll write out how it connects to everything else that you're learning. This is the how. How does it connect to everything else? Now let's head on over to my whiteboard and I'm going to show you exactly how to use this DRC critical thinking model when you study. All right, so let's walk through the DRC model for a myocardial infarction or a heart attack. So the first part is the D description or definition. So all we're going to do here is write out the description and the definition of what a heart attack is. So there's a block of blood flow to the heart usually caused by a plaque or clot. So plaque buildup around the heart, things like that. So the first part is the D description or definition. So all we're going to do is write out the description or the definition of what a heart attack is. In a heart attack, there's a block of blood flow to the heart usually caused by a clot or plaque buildup. That's all we need to write here. All we're trying to do is a very high level overview of what a heart attack is. Now we're going to move to the R, which is reasoning or rationale. So here we're going to say the why, why does it happen? So because this is a med surgical disorder that we're going to do deal with here. It's a heart attack, so it's a disorder. Then we are going to write out the pathophysiology. So for your med surgical disorders, when you get to the R, think pathophysiology. Why is it happening in the body? Now here's where you really need to start critically thinking. I want you to dig deep into the patho and figure out exactly why it happens. So for the R reasoning or rationale, why does it happen? Blood vessels around the heart become blocked. Blood flow can get to the heart which is ischemia and it can lead to heart tissue death, which is necrosis. So that's what we're going to write here for the R reasoning or rationale. So when you see a med surgical disorder and use the DRC model on your med surgical disorders, think pathophysiology for the R. If you're studying something else like a medication, for example, when you get to the R, think mechanism of action. How does that drug act in the body? If you're studying something like a skills for clinical, like in your skills lab, if you're learning how to put in an IV or something like that. For the reasoning or rationale, think why does this matter? So write out literally why do we do this skill? Why does it matter? How does it affect the patient? That is what I want you to think about for this R section, reasoning or rationale. Now we're going to move to the C, which is connection. We're going to connect the dots with Everything else that you're learning. So this is really where your critical thinking skills kick into high gear. This is where the fun happens. So for the c, because this is a med surg disorder, we're going to walk through the three other main parts of a med surg, signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. So we need to connect the dots between the pathophysiology and the description and definition of this disorder and connect it to everything else we know about a heart attack. So this is an example of things that you would write here. I would break it out this way. Signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions. It just makes it a little bit easier for you to see on your paper. So you can literally write this all out just like this on your paper. So for a heart attack, signs and symptoms, some that are possible, pain, shortness of breath, nausea, vomiting, fatigue. Those are all possible signs and symptoms of a myocardial infection or a heart attack. Now, things you would want to assess for in your nursing assessment, their ecg, their vital signs, labs, their respiratory system, all of those things, you would write those out here, what you're going to assess for in a patient with a heart attack. Now, this is not an exhaustive list. This is just an example for you to follow. So you would actually write out. When you do this for your classes while you're studying, make sure you're writing out everything that you can think of for signs and symptoms, nursing assessment and nursing interventions, because that's going to really help you bring it all together and connect all those dots. Now for the nursing interventions, give medications as prescribed, give oxygen as prescribed, encourage them to rest. Those are all really great nursing interventions for a patient with an mi. Now this is an example of going through the DRC model for a med surg disorder like a heart attack. But let's say you're studying something like a medication. Then for the C part here, the connection part, you would walk through, how does that medication impact the disorder that the patient has? Why are they taking it? How is it going to help them? How does it relate to all the other medications that they're taking? Those are the things that you would list here. And then of course, the side effects, the nursing assessment and as well, how to give the medication. You could write it all out here as well. And if you're doing something like a skill, like putting in an iv, in this connection part, you would write out, how does that impact the patient? How do you do it? What are the steps of putting in an iv? What are the things that you're going to need to look for things like phlebitis or infiltration. What are the nursing interventions that you're going to do? Like what supplies do you need in order to do it? Those are all things that you would write out in this C part, the connection part of the DRC model. So literally, as you are studying, walk through this, write it out on a piece of paper DRC and go through this, write it all out for everything that you're studying. This will really help you critically think in nursing school. Now, if you are a nursing SOS member, make sure you log into your dashboard and check out all of the med surg courses that we have for you, like cardiac, respiratory, endocrine, renal, all the things. Because we break out each disorder in those courses into these four main sections. Pathophysiology and signs and symptoms, Nursing assessment and Nursing interventions. So as you're doing this DRC model, if you're a nursing SOS member, we make it so easy for you because we give you all of these things to plug in here and to study. So it's basically like having the DRC model all done for you. You just got to plug it in. And if you're not a nursing SOS member yet, make sure that you sign up for the wait list. The description is down below so you will be the first to be notified when enrollment opens again. In the next video I'm going to tell you the biggest nursing school lies that you have been told that you shouldn't listen to. So make sure to check that video out and don't forget to snag your free critical thinking cheat sheet. The link is down below in the description for you to check it out and make sure to like, comment, subscribe and share this video to show your support of our channel and tell the world that you want to become an amazing nurse. Now click on one of these videos right over here so you can keep rocking nursing school and and go become the nurse that God created only you to be. I will catch you in the next video, my friend. Take care.
