摘要：The overall purpose of phase 3 was to implement the educational programme that was developed to facilitate the development of critical thinking in the student nurse. A quasi-experimental design within the quantitative approach for phase 3 was used. The purpose of a quasi-experimental design was to identify and demonstrate casual relationships, examine relationships and clarify why certain events happened. The educational programme was implemented over a period of three days, covering theoretical and practical content. The objectives for this phase were to select the two groups of final-year student nurses to fit the quasi experimental design as the experimental and control group; conduct a pre-test on both the experimental and the control group in Windhoek and Oshakati to determine their application of critical thinking skills to the management of a given case in an imaginary case scenario; implement and facilitate the educational programme over a predetermined period of three days during the second semester of training for the experimental group in Windhoek and ensure active participation by participants for the duration of the educational programme. The population for this study consisted of nursing students in their final year (fourth year) of study at the training hospitals of Windhoek and Oshakati. Both campuses are incorporated in the Faculty of Health Sciences. The full population of the fourth-year class at the Windhoek campus was selected to be part of the experimental group (47 students) and the students from Oshakati (53 students) formed the control group. The total number of students amounted to 100 students.
