Developing and Testing of a Software Prototype to Support Diagnostic Reasoning of Nursing Students.
To design and test educational software to improve nursing students' diagnostic reasoning through NANDA-I-based clinical scenarios.



A mixed method approach was used and included content validation by a panel of 13 experts and prototype testing by a sample of 56 students.



Experts' suggestions included writing adjustments, new response options, and replacement of clinical information on the scenarios. Percentages of students' correct answers were 65.7%, 62.2%, and 60.5% for related factors, defining characteristics, and nursing diagnoses, respectively.



Full development of this software shows strong potential for enhancing students' diagnostic reasoning.



New graduates may be able to apply diagnostic reasoning more rapidly by exercising their diagnostic skills within this software.
Postdoctoral fellow at the Department of Health Systems Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
Vanessa Emille Carvalho
VEC
de Sousa
Nursing Associate Professor at the Federal University of Ceará, Fortaleza, Ceará, Brazil.
Marcos Venícios
MV
de Oliveira Lopes
Annabel Davis Jenks Endowed Professor at the University of Florida, Gainesville, Florida.
Gail M
GM
Keenan
Assistant Professor at the Department of Health Systems Science, University of Illinois at Chicago, Chicago, Illinois.
Karen Dunn
KD
Lopez
D000328:Adult; D006801:Humans; D011340:Problem Solving; D012985:Software Design; D013338:Students, Nursing / Q000523:psychology*; D011795:Surveys and Questionnaires; D013647:Task Performance and Analysis; D013850:Thinking
Acurácia diagnóstica; Clinical reasoning; diagnostic accuracy; informática em enfermagem; nursing informatics; raciocínio clínico