About the Author and Teacher
Dr. Linda Caputi
Throughout my first 20 years teaching nursing in a pre-licensure nursing program, I was fascinated with the lack of a specific way to teach nursing students to Think Like a Nurse. This lack of a specific framework and process for teaching clinical judgment produced very inconsistent results; that is some students “got it” and other students did not. Learning to Think Like a Nurse and use clinical judgment should not be a “hit or miss” reality. Learning clinical judgment should be a planned, focused, systematic learning experience.
Throughout those first 20 years I worked diligently to learn what teaching critical thinking (as it was called back then) is all about. In the 1990s I developed a computer software program used by nursing schools all over the country to teach students thinking in nursing. It was titled SOS – Strategies for Problem Solving.
At that time, I was enrolled in a Doctor of Education program. A large part of my graduate studies focused on designing quality learning experiences which included taking on the very elusive topic of teaching nursing students how to “Think Like a Nurse”. The work to develop a solid approach for teaching and learning clinical judgment culminated in 2001 with the rudimentary version of the current Caputi Clinical Judgment Framework. Since that time the Caputi Clinical Judgment Framework has matured to its current version which is offered in the nursing student textbook Think Like a Nurse: The Caputi Method for Learning Clinical Judgment and taught in the Caputi Online Clinical Judgment Course delivered on this website.
Throughout the last 20 years I have worked with hundreds of schools across the country to implement this planned approach for faculty to teach clinical judgment and for students to learn clinical judgment. Many of the schools that were struggling with NCLEX pass rates report that by using the Caputi Clinical Judgment Framework they raised their NCLEX pass rates from the mid-60s to the upper 80s within one year. Over 150 nursing schools in the US have officially adopted Think Like a Nurse: A Handbook (which is the 2018 and 2020 version of Think Like a Nurse: The Caputi Method for Learning Clinical Judgment) in just a little over two years’ time. Think Like a Nurse: The Caputi Method for Learning Clinical Judgment and the Caputi Online Clinical Judgment Course expand on the original book to ensure the Caputi Clinical Judgment Framework not only supports but teaches the thinking needed to prepare for the Next Generation NCLEX (NGN). Both the textbook and the online course provide a solid approach to learning the six cognitive processes of the NGN Clinical Judgment Measurement Model.
In 2021 Dr. Caputi received a request from a nursing school in Canada to develop a Canadian version of the textbook. Therefore, use of Think Like a Nurse: The Caputi Method for Learning Clinical Judgment is being expanded into Canada with a Canadian version ready early in 2022.
Thank you for considering adopting the Caputi Online Clinical Judgment Course. If you have any questions, please complete the Contact Form.
For more information about Dr. Caputi, please visit her website.