ABSTRACT
Introduction: Nursing education is responsible for providing an environment to facilitate students learning and acquiring cognitive, affective and psychomotor skills. Nurses are now required to provide skilled, multidimensional care in multiple, often unfamiliar environments or settings. Consequently, nurses should be prepared to function as safe, competent, intuitive and innovative clinicians in an environment where new information and clinical situations are constantly changing. In the midst of a knowledge explosion in health care, students need to be provided with the tools and experiences that teach them how to think that promotes an understanding and an embracement of lifelong learning. This study was developed to determine and compare the nursing student's creativeness
Methods: This was a cross-sectional study. The study was carried out in Faculty of Nursing and Midwifery Iran University of Medical Sciences. Study population was all of students enrolled in nursing four-year program 2009-2010 curriculum. Three hundred and twenty two students participated in this study by using the Abebi's creativity Test. The data was coded and analyzed using the SPSS. Mean creativity scores between students' responses in different years were compared by ANOVA
Results: It was found that the mean score of the students' creativity was 136.19 +/- 13.31. When compared to a normative sample of Iran, the subjects were above or similar for overall creativity totally and four subscales. When the mean score and number of years of education were considered, no statistically significant difference was found for overall creativity, fluency and originality [P>0.05]. However the difference for mean scores of elaboration [F=3.35, P=0.019] and flexibility [F=2.82, P=0.039] was statistically significant
Conclusion: Nursing schools should establish proper, accepting, and trustable atmosphere in order to develop nursing student's thinking, creativity, Self-centered learning abilities. This Atmosphere facilitates inquiry and questioning skills and improves unpredictable solutions in students and after that this critical skill will be improved. Revision the undergraduate educational program frequently according Nursing students' creativity seems to be necessary