In his book Start with Why, Simon Sinek (2009) challenges leaders to examine first and foremost why we undertake anything. He asks us to focus on how only when the why is crystal clear. The why of teaching nursing seems straightforward: the preparation of competent, caring, and compassionate nurses. But let's consider the even broader purpose of education, that is, learning to think critically, beyond facts, figures, processes, and procedures. Education is intent on producing learned individuals who can use their reasoning to guide society on the macropopulation level or at the microindividual level.
Consider the prerequisites for nursing majors - those courses students must complete successfully before we focus them on the science and art of nursing. The purpose of these courses is not simply to gain information and knowledge of other disciplines, particularly those like pathophysiology that are closely aligned with nursing. Rather, these courses immerse students in different ways of thinking; they start training the brain so that the individual will arrive at nursing with enhanced reasoning. Consider, for example, the basic chemistry laboratory problem of taking an unknown substance and determining its components. The student uses a sequence of tests to find out how the substance does (or does not) react to finally define its elements. This deductive reasoning exercise builds the mental pathways that are later relevant to making clinical practice diagnoses.
In recent years, nursing and the NLN (2015), in particular, have placed a significant focus on conducting rigorous research on the how of nursing education - what techniques result in meaningful learning about nursing. The specificity of this journey could have missed the why of nursing education with an overdue emphasis on the processes and without its cogent look at the outcomes - the learning. In particular, research has revealed a well-conceived and well-documented theory and strategies around the use of simulation, which were compiled in the last two issues of this journal. Within this context, I worry that debriefing techniques are so linked to simulation that we miss their relevance to the why of education. Debriefing is the how that fosters the development of critical thinking to advance civil society.
In particular, let's consider how the documented effectiveness of debriefing approaches reflects a much earlier heritage in the development of critical thinking. Socratic methods are not the common genre of instruction, but they warrant mention as we proceed with instruction in classrooms and other environments that are not attached to simulation. The premise of the Socratic method is to continue questioning, always getting deeper into the thinking. When a fallacy is exposed, the learners must consider if the original query was answered correctly. The leader and learners then begin the thinking journey again to see if there is another reasoning pathway that supports the original or another answer. In Greece, in the age of Socrates, the length of these dialogues was not compromised by other time pressures, such as those we face daily.
Debriefing doesn't strive to elicit a fallacy in reasoning but does aim to get at the underlying reasoning of the individual, thereby promoting acquisition of the subject content or phenomenon. It resembles the Socratic method, in that the questioning is orderly and intentional, to make learners go deeper into their own intellect, beyond the simple facts to interlinking relationships. It is a documented and vital how of nursing education.
Debriefing should not be relegated to simulation. It may be the classroom technique that moves us away from "sage on the stage" approaches, but it doesn't demand limitless amounts of time to explore numerous reasoning pathways. It may be the modern day version of the Socratic method, one that fits today's knowledge boom and time pressures while fostering the basic why of our efforts - the development of critical thinkers.
As faculty reflect on their own educational practices, I urge each of them to examine the use of the techniques developed as debriefing for classroom use. Recognizing the why of our work positions all to become open to the documented benefits on learner outcomes. In this manner, nursing again underscores its place as an academic discipline - meeting the why of education.
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