Introduction:

Critical thinking is an important component of nursing education. Different organizations demand critical thinking strategies in order to accredit university programs. Nevertheless, there is limited evidence in regards to how critical thinking levels can be assessed.

Objective:

To compare the critical thinking levels of undergraduate nursing students from first and last semesters in a university of Medellin-Colombia.

Materials and methods:

A quantitative, descriptive, cross-sectional and comparative study of critical thinking carried out with an appropriate sample of students from first and last semesters.

Results:

Both groups showed a medium level (44.47 and 53.14 for first and last semester students, respectively). However, there is a 19.49% increase in last semester students compared to ones belonging to first semester, with significant changes in domains like evaluation, argumentation and interpretation. We did not observe significant changes in inference and analysis.

Conclusions:

Our findings show a positive change in the critical thinking level, a result that can be used as a starting point for the analysis of the teaching-learning processes developed in the Nursing Faculty. Our results are also important for strengthening the domains that showed significant increments and developing strategies to foster the development of skills in the areas where changes were not evident. We consider that it is relevant to carry out studies with longitudinal measurements and reliable instruments.

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