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How to Create a Basic Nursing Concept Map
A nursing concept map is a visual model outlining the relationship between various nursing concepts. The use of concept mapping has been an integral component of nursing programs for decades. Nursing schools have long relied on this method to teach critical thinking skills to nursing students and prepare them to apply their theoretical nursing education in clinical settings.
So, what exactly is a nursing concept map? How effective is it as a teaching strategy, and how should you go about creating one? This article answers these questions and shows you how to create your own concept map template in minutes.
What is a nursing concept map?
A nursing concept map is a tool that defines, organizes, and categorizes information pertaining to a nursing care plan, a medical diagnosis, nursing tasks, or nursing interventions, among many other fundamental topics. The map can follow several different structures, with the following four being the most commonly used:
- Spider maps: Spider mapping is the structure you will encounter the most in nursing. These maps feature a main topic at the center and sub-elements grouped around it.
- Hierarchical maps: These maps outline concepts from top to bottom, with the main topic at the top and more specific concepts below.
- Flow charts: These are simple diagrams that outline a workflow. Nursing flow charts represent the nursing process in sequential order.
- System maps: Just like flow charts, these maps organize the workflow in sequential order. The difference between the two is that system maps add inputs and outputs to the main diagram.
What is a nursing concept map used for?
Nursing schools use nursing concept maps as teaching tools. Concept mapping helps initiate students into the nursing workflow by distilling complex information into simple visual concepts. This approach aims to provide nurses with the relevant information needed to make the correct nursing diagnosis, apply the appropriate patient care plan, or determine outcomes for a patient.
As a learning strategy, nursing concept maps have proven effective in improving students’ decision-making, clinical judgment, and ability to see the big picture regarding the steps required to provide the best health care to the patient.
According to a study by Janet K. Garwood, Azza H. Ahmed, and Sara A. McComb, the effects of concept mapping are especially noticeable in students’ improved critical thinking skills and ability to apply theory to nursing practice.
A step-by-step guide to creating a basic nursing concept map
Now that you are familiar with nursing concept maps and their role in nurse education today, let’s break down how to create your concept map.
Step 1: Start with the main concept map topic
Choosing a main topic is the first step when using the spider-mapping structure. Depending on need and priority, your main element could be any of the following:
- Patient care plan: This patient care plan topic covers anything deemed relevant to patient care, from past medical history to risk factors. The intended purpose is to equip nurses with every piece of information that could aid in devising the right care plan for the patient.
- Medical diagnosis: Medical diagnosis maps dive into any element that pertains to the diagnosis of the disease. This includes risk factors, symptoms, medications, complications, and interventions.
- SBAR: This acronym stands for s ituation, b ackground, a ssessment, and r ecommendation. SBAR concept maps represent all the information nurses need to ensure smooth communication between them and doctors.
- Nursing responsibilities: Nursing teams also use concept maps to delineate tasks and duties. For instance, the tasks expected from a surgical nurse will be specifically illustrated on the map. In this case, elements like prevention of infection, behavior response, and post-up care might be grouped around the main topic.
Step 2: Determine secondary subsections
Once you’ve picked your main topic, the next step is grouping a set of subsections around it. Using a patient care plan map as our example, the elements below can be used as secondary subsections for the topic:
- Diagnostic process
- Current patient history
- Risk factors
- Patient info
- Past medical history
- Medication list
Step 3: List key info for each subsection
After picking your subsections, supplement each category with key info that expands on each concept. Using the same patient care plan example, here are some possible key elements for the secondary subsections above:
- Assessment > Diagnosis
- Diagnostic process > Lab results – physical exam results
- Current patient history > Day of admission – chief complaint
- Risk factors > Use of tobacco products – dietary habits
- Patient info > Age – sex – race – marital status
- Past medical history > Childhood illnesses – major adulthood illnesses – surgical history – injury history – allergies – prior hospitalizations
- Medication list > Medication one – medication two – medication three
Nursing Concept Map Example
Nursing concept maps visually represent the relationship between points within the nursing process. They should include all (or as many as possible) key points mentioned above to get a full picture of your patient’s case.
Take a look at this nursing concept map example to help you understand how to put it all together:
Looking for more examples of nursing processes? SimpleNursing can help
A career in health care offers many advantages to anyone willing to pursue it. Besides the fulfilling feeling of helping and caring for others through a journey of meaningful learning, nursing can be financially rewarding after years of experience in the profession; however, you need to pass the required exams before taking off in your future career.
Luckily, SimpleNursing provides learners like you with all the resources needed to study, prepare for, and ultimately ace the TEAS or HESI A2 entrance exams, nursing school tests, and the NCLEX . Our comprehensive plans contain over 1,000 videos with memory tricks, 800 study guides and cheat sheets, and a quiz bank loaded with practice questions.
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Effectiveness of concept mapping and traditional linear nursing care plans on critical thinking skills in clinical pediatric nursing course
Affiliation.
- 1 Community-oriented Nursing and Midwifery Research Center, Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Shahrekord, Iran.
- PMID: 28546978
- PMCID: PMC5433638
- DOI: 10.4103/jehp.jehp_49_14
Introduction: Concept map is a useful cognitive tool for enhancing a student's critical thinking (CT) by encouraging students to process information deeply for understanding. However, the evidence regarding its effectiveness on nursing students' CT is contradictory. This paper compares the effectiveness of concept mapping and traditional linear nursing care planning on students' CT.
Methods: An experimental design was used to examine the CT of 60 baccalaureate students who participated in pediatric clinical nursing course in the Shahrekord University of Medical Sciences, Shahrekord, Iran in 2013.
Results: Participants were randomly divided into six equal groups of each 10 student, of which three groups were the control group, and the others were the experimental group. The control group completed nine traditional linear nursing care plans, whereas experimental group completed nine concept maps during the course. Both groups showed significant improvement in overall and all subscales of the California CT skill test from pretest to posttest ( P < 0.001), but t -test demonstrated that improvement in students' CT skills in the experimental group was significantly greater than in the control group after the program ( P < 0.001).
Conclusions: Our findings support that concept mapping can be used as a clinical teaching-learning activity to promote CT in nursing students.
Keywords: Concept mapping; critical thinking; nursing students; traditional nursing care plan.
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Fostering critical thinking (CT) is one of the most important missions in medical education. Concept mapping is a method used to plan and create medical care through a diagrammatic representation of patient problems and medical interventions. Concept ...
Critical thinking is a complex cognitive process broadly defined as the use of purposeful, ... Using concept mapping in the education of nursing students appears to predict the development of CT skills, which is one of the most important duties of nursing education. Nurse educators are expected to apply educational methods for improving the CT ...
The variation in the results of studies on concept maps and critical thinking in nursing education may be related to the variety of scoring formulas in use. West, Park, ... The influence of concept mapping on critical thinking in baccalaureate nursing students. Journal of Professional Nursing, 19, 339-346. 10.1016/S8755-7223(03)00134-
This systematic review and meta-analysis provided evidence supporting the effectiveness of concept mapping in nursing education. To our knowledge, this is the first meta-analysis of the effect of concept mapping on critical thinking to nursing students and clinical nurse who participate in continuing education.
Concept maps are considered a powerful metacognitive tool that can facilitate the acquisition of knowledge through meaningful learning. Hence concept mapping can be used to promote and evaluate critical thinking. Based on the published nursing literature, the scope of concept mapping is discussed in this paper as a teaching and evaluation ...
Concept maps were first created by Novak and Gowin (1984) based on Ausubel's (1963, 2000) assimilation theory of meaningful learning. Concept map research in nursing education began in the 1990s. More recently, concept mapping has been shown to promote critical thinking and build clinical judgment skills (Yue, Zhang, Zhang, et al., 2017 ...
Concept mapping has been used to help nursing students develop critical thinking skills and improve clinical judgment. Concept map is used in numerous healthcare professional programs including medical, nursing, and pharmaceutical education to foster critical thinking and clinical reasoning (Carr-Lopez, Galal, Vyas, Patel, & Gnesa,
From 2011-2015: looked at impact on critical thinking with nursing students and Identified new research area of assessing the effects of combining concept maps with simulations in nursing education. Daley 2017: USA: Qualitative: Baccalaureate program, n = 104: High-fidelity simulation in simulation lab in school Concept maps used as debriefing ...
Therefore, concept mapping may be an active. learning strategy used to promote critical thinking in prelicensure nursing students. Traditional six-column care plans promote linear thinking which may contribute to the. lack of critical thinking in prelicensure nursing students (Cook et al., 2012).
Research Article Impact of a concept map teaching approach on nursing students' critical thinking skills Mahmoud Kaddoura PhD, CAGS, APRN, NP-C, CNE, 1Olga Van-Dyke PhD (C), CAGS, MSN, RN2 and Qing Yang PhD 1SchoolofNursing,DukeUniversity,Durham,NorthCarolina,USAand2SchoolofNursing,MassachusettsCollegeofPharmacy and Health Sciences (MCPHS University), Boston, Massachusetts, USA
International Journal of Nursing Practice 2012; 18: 233-239 Care plans using concept maps and their effects on the critical thinking dispositions of nursing students It is expected that nursing ...
In the past decade an increasing emphasis has been placed on the importance of critical thinking in nursing. Nurse educators are faced with the challenge of finding ways to promote and evaluate critical thinking in nursing students, and various teaching strategies have been identified to achieve this goal. Concept maps are considered a powerful metacognitive tool that can facilitate the ...
a concept map would provide a tool to. guide their critical thinking until it becomes. inherent or second nature. The concept map, a graphic illustration of key points, guides. the focus of ...
A nursing concept map is a visual model outlining the relationship between various nursing concepts. The use of concept mapping has been an integral component of nursing programs for decades. Nursing schools have long relied on this method to teach critical thinking skills to nursing students and prepare them to apply their theoretical nursing ...
Introduction: Concept map is a useful cognitive tool for enhancing a student's critical thinking (CT) by encouraging students to process information deeply for understanding. However, the evidence regarding its effectiveness on nursing students' CT is contradictory. This paper compares the effectiveness of concept mapping and traditional linear nursing care planning on students' CT.