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Abstract Critical thinking is an active and organized mental process essential for scientific thinking. Acquiring this ability should be one of the most important goals in one’s life as it enables to evaluate, compare, analyze, critique, and synthesize information. It is essential to both effective learning and productive living. Critical thinking disposition is a consistent internal motivation to act toward or respond to persons, events, or circumstances in habitual, yet potentially malleable way, with a tendency to use ones critical thinking skill. Nursing internship training is the most critical period in the professional life of a graduate. It should enhance nurse interns’ critical thinking. This study aim was to study the effect of nursing internship training program on the critical thinking dispositions of nurse interns through assessing critical thinking dispositions of nurse interns at the beginning and after the internship year and comparing between the two pre/post internship program assessments.This pre-post evaluation study was conducted at Ainshams University Hospitals. A convenience sample of 140 nurse interns was selected from the nurse interns enrolled in internship program in these settings. A self-administered questionnaire sheet was used to collect data. It comprised a part for socio-demographic data, and the California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) to assess the critical thinking of nurse interns. The tool was reviewed by seven experts in the area and specialty, and pilot-tested for reliability. The fieldwork was in December 2012 and July 2013. The main study findings were as follows. The nurse interns’ age ranged between 20 and 25 years with mean 22 years, with slightly more females (60%) and a majority having general pre-university education (90%). The scores of the different domains of critical thinking disposition were generally high mostly exceeding 75% of the maximum score. The lowest score was in systematicity (72.0%) while the highest was in analycity (84.2%). The total mean percent score was 77.2%.The scores of male nurse interns were statistically significantly higher in maturity (p=0.005), and tended to be higher in self-confidence (p=0.09). No relations of statistical significance were revealed in nurse interns’ scores of critical thinking and their age, pre-university type of education, grades of academic performance, and the department of training. The nurse interns with urban residence tended to have higher inquisitiveness (p=0.08) and total critical thinking (p=0.07) scores but the differences did not reach statistical significance. The results showed statistically significant increases in the scores of all critical thinking disposition domains at the end of the internship program (p<0.001). The highest improvement was in the domain of maturity which increased by 7.3 points. In total, the mean gain in critical thinking disposition score after the program was 43.4 points. Overall, 59 of the nurse interns had low critical thinking disposition at the start of the internship program,compared with only 1 nurse intern at the end of the program (p<0.001). Statistically significant moderate to strong correlations were revealed among nurse interns’ scores of critical thinking disposition at the start of the program. At the end of the program, these correlations decreased in most domains. At the end of the program statistically significant weak negative correlations were shown between nurse interns’ grades and their scores of systematicity (r=-0.223) and total critical thinking disposition (r=-0.177). The best fitting logistic regression model for nurse interns’ critical thinking disposition identified the internship program was the only statistically significant positive predictor of the improvement. In conclusion, the nurse interns in Ain-shams University Hospitals have generally high scores of critical thinking disposition at the start of the internship program, with males having better maturity scores. The internship program is the only significant positive predictor of the improvement in nurse interns’ critical thinking disposition. Based on the main study findings, it is recommended that the nurse internship programs should give more emphasis on enhancing the critical thinking disposition of the nurse interns, especially the domains of inquisitiveness and selfconfidence through training sessions and workshops. Female nurse interns and those from rural residence need more fostering of their critical thinking disposition. Further research is needed in this area given the paucity of local related literature. Intervention studies are suggested to assess the effectiveness of different educational approaches in enhancing nurse interns’ critical thinking disposition. |