A prospective study on the development of critical thinking skills for student prosthetists and orthotists in Hong Kong.

Critical thinking skill is considered to be one of the important attributes to nurture students to cope with the challenges coming from this ever-changing world. The training of critical thinking skill could be quite different from the conventional education. Thus, special arrangements should be considered in the curriculum design and effective assessment method should be employed to test the subsequent learning outcome. This study was to evaluate prospectively the development of critical thinking disposition of the student prosthetists and orthotists in Hong Kong and a validated instrument, the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) was used. The results showed that there was significant improvement in 5 out of the 7 domains, namely Truthseeking, Open-mindedness, Systematicity, Analyticity, Critical thinking self-confidence, Inquisitiveness and Maturity of judgment in 3 years' time. Further curriculum enhancements were suggested as the sum of all the domains was just slightly above the threshold of positive tendency.