ATI Critical Thinking Exit Exam Reflection

• Following the ATI Critical Thinking Assessment, write a brief description and analysis of how your exit exam results compared with your entrance exam results. What steps will you take to further develop your critical thinking skills as you look ahead to the transition from nursing student to professional nurse? 

My exit exam score was surprisingly lower than my entrance exam grade by a few points. I’m not upset with a slightly lower score because my initial score was a 75% and I went down to a 70%, so only a few questions different. Scheduling this exam a few hours before an exam for maternity was not the easiest to shift my mindset and take a break from reviewing. To further develop my critical thinking scores, I can: do practice NCLEX critical thinking problems, slow down when taking the exam, do more deep breaths and feel less anxious during the exam and try and not feel as distracted when others are completed with their exam. Some specific areas to improve on based on my ATI Report are inference, self-regulation, and interpretation so finding specific practice questions in these areas would be most beneficial. Inference is drawing conclusions based on evidence and identifying gaps in knowledge. Self-regulation is reflecting on your own thinking and analyzing added information to make a decision. Interpretation is understanding and explaining written directions data and graphics. Over the course of the next couple months about to prepare for the NCLEX, these areas would be the best to prioritize and look over to improve my critical thinking skills as I become a professional nurse.