Do prelicensure nursing students' backgrounds impact what they notice and interpret about patients?

Academic educators are challenged to foster the development of clinical judgment in diverse learners. The impact of nursing students' backgrounds on clinical judgment has not previously been studied. 1.Determine what identifiable background variables influence what students notice and how they interpret what is noticed;2.Identify some implications for pedagogical approaches that may foster clinical judgment development among diverse learners. Prelicensure/preregistration students, representing three international English-speaking programs in 3 countries, comprised the sample (N = 532). All were enrolled in the first course in which perioperative content was taught. An online learning activity was designed to elicit responses to a simulated case study of an expert nurse role model caring for an older adult patient experiencing delirium several days post-operatively. Dyads of coders did three rounds of coding. Logistic and multinomial logistic regression models used background variables to look for patterns in student responses. The data strongly suggest that background variables impact clinical judgment, however, not in interpretable patterns. Nurse educators must acknowledge that prelicensure students' backgrounds impact their clinical judgment and assist them to learn to think like nurses. •An array of demographic variables impact nursing students’ clinical judgment.•An interpretable pattern of the impact of demographic variables is impossible.•Program was a significant variable on students’ clinical judgment development.•Educators must learn about students' backgrounds to use pedagogical approaches that foster clinical judgment development.