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UK educators often express concerns that students from some cultural backgrounds frequently seem unwilling or are unable to apply critical thinking skills within their academic programmes. This may be due not to a lack of ability or confidence but rather to the way they have been previously taught and assessed. Often, the design of UK courses implicitly requires critical thinking skills, but the design of the use of these skills in courses may not have taken into account the conceptualization of critical thinking across a diverse global group of students. This paper reports on the results of a study of Master's engineering students from two universities in the UK to assess their conceptualization of critical thinking. The findings provide evidence that international engineering students' understanding of critical thinking is not well developed, although they may, without being aware of it, have a critical thinking mindset, and often display these skills. (Contains 3 tables.)

Rationale and Objectives: Accurate cerebrospinal fluid (CSF) pressure measurements are critical for diagnosis and treatment of pathologic processes involving the central nervous system. Measuring opening CSF pressure using an analog device takes several minutes, which can be burdensome in a busy practice. The purpose of this study was to compare accuracy of a digital pressure measurement device with analog manometry, the reference gold standard. Secondary purpose included an assessment of possible time savings. Materials and Methods: This study was a retrospective, cross-sectional investigation of 71 patients who underwent image-guided lumbar puncture (LP) with opening CSF pressure measurement at a single institution from June 2019 to September 2019. Exclusion criteria were examinations without complete data for both the digital and analog measurements or without recorded needle gauge. All included LPs and CSF pressures were measured with the patient in the left lateral decubitus position, legs extended. Acquired data included (1) digital and analog CSF pressures and (2) time required to measure CSF pressure. Results: A total of 56 procedures were analyzed in 55 patients. There was no significant difference in mean CSF pressures between devices: 22.5 cm H2O digitally vs 23.1 analog (p =.7). Use of the digital manometer resulted in a time savings of 6 min (438 s analog vs 78 s digital, p <.001). Conclusion: Cerebrospinal fluid pressure measurements obtained with digital manometry demonstrate comparable accuracy to the reference standard of analog manometry, with an average time savings of approximately 6 min per case. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]