Every Interaction Is an Opportunity

Jul 15

Every interaction is an opportunity to coach how students think, not simply evaluate what they know.

That idea started, as many of my best ideas do, with a conversation.

Since stepping into academia, my best friend Dr. Kelli Seaton has been one of my most important thinking partners. Dr. Seaton created Meta3™, a strategy execution framework designed to determine whether strategy actually gets executed or quietly stalls at the leadership level. We talk about this work at least weekly because we believe in it that much.

Recently she shared something from a leadership perspective that I recognized immediately:

The leaders whose teams actually grow are the ones who have learned to notice when the struggle is productive, listen to what the person actually needs rather than what feels efficient, see the pattern of their own intervention instinct, and choose the response that serves the person's development rather than their own discomfort.

I read that and recognized something I had been trying to articulate since stepping into academia.

Teaching and Coaching Are Not the Same Thing

Most of us entered nursing education to teach. We design lectures, build simulations, write clinical objectives, and evaluate student performance. That work matters.

But Patricia Benner, in her landmark critique of nursing education, argued that we have spent too much time on content acquisition and not enough on developing clinical reasoning. She was specific about what she believed faculty should be doing instead: coaching thinking, coaching perception, coaching interpretation (Benner et al., 2010).

Not correcting answers. Coaching thinking.

Christine Tanner's Clinical Judgment Model (2006) points in the same direction. Expert nursing educators make thinking visible. They do not ask students what the right answer is. They ask students what they noticed, what they thought it meant, why they made the choice they made, and what they would do differently. That is not evaluation. That is coaching.

I often tell my students: yes, you need the grade to pass the course, graduate, and eventually take the NCLEX. But what matters most to me is that you can think critically about the decisions you are making and understand the why behind them. That is what you will carry with you to the bedside, not your grade.

When we intentionally develop clinical judgment, we are preparing students for much more than an exam. We are preparing them to provide safe, thoughtful, and compassionate patient care.

Most nursing programs recognize this. The Clinical Judgment Measurement Model has shifted how we think about evaluation, and that shift matters. But knowing what clinical judgment looks like on an assessment and coaching students to develop it in real time are two different things. The question is not whether we value clinical reasoning. Most of us do. The question is whether our daily interactions with students are coaching it or simply measuring it.

What Coaching Thinking Actually Looks Like

For faculty, it sounds like this:

Instead of "That is incorrect," you ask "Walk me through your thinking."

Instead of "What is the right intervention?" you ask "What cues led you there?"

Instead of "You should have caught that," you ask "What were you noticing about yourself and the situation?"

Those questions do something that correction cannot do. They make the student's thinking visible, to you and to them. And once thinking is visible, it can be examined, challenged, and developed. That is metacognition in action.

For students, it feels different too. When a faculty member asks "walk me through your thinking," they are saying: your reasoning process matters to me, not just your answer. That is a fundamentally different learning relationship.

Vygotsky called the space between what a learner can do alone and what they can do with skilled guidance the zone of proximal development. Coaching lives in that space. It is not solving the problem for the student. It is asking the questions that help the student solve it themselves.

Why This Connects to Professional Identity

You cannot evaluate a student into professional identity. You cannot test them into clinical wisdom. You cannot correct them into accountability.

But you can coach their thinking, consistently, over time, in relationship, until the questions you ask become the questions they ask themselves.

That is when something shifts. Reflection is no longer something a student does because it is required. It becomes something they do because they have internalized the habit of examining their own thinking against the professional they are becoming.

Kelli's leadership insight applies here too. The educators whose students actually grow are the ones who have learned to notice when the struggle is productive, listen to what the student actually needs rather than what feels efficient, see the pattern of their own intervention instinct, and choose the response that serves the student's development rather than their own discomfort.

That last one is the Trust Equation. When your self-orientation is low, you can choose the response that serves them. When it is high, you choose the response that relieves your own discomfort. Students know the difference, even when they cannot name it.

A Note to Students

When a faculty member asks you to walk through your thinking, something important is happening. Your reasoning process matters, not just your answer. That question is an invitation to examine how you think, which is the skill that will serve your patients long after any specific piece of content has faded.

The questions that feel hardest in the moment, what were you noticing, what cues led you there, what would you do differently, are the ones building the clinical judgment that no exam can fully measure. Lean into them.

And when you have a moment to reflect, consider adding one more question of your own: how does this decision guide me toward the nurse I see myself becoming?

That question changes everything. It connects the clinical moment to the professional you are working toward, one choice, one interaction, one reflection at a time.

A Question for Educators

How often do you find yourself correcting answers when you could be coaching thinking?

Not because correction is wrong. Sometimes it is exactly right. But if correction is the default rather than the deliberate choice, it is worth asking whose need it is serving.

Every interaction is an opportunity.

I would love to hear how you coach thinking in your clinical, simulation, or classroom practice.

References

Benner, P., Sutphen, M., Leonard, V., & Day, L. (2010). Educating nurses: A call for radical transformation. Jossey-Bass.

Tanner, C. A. (2006). Thinking like a nurse: A research-based model of clinical judgment in nursing. Journal of Nursing Education, 45(6), 204–211.

The views expressed in this article are my own and do not represent the official position of Riverside City College or the Riverside Community College District.

Melinda Murray