Abstract
INTRODUCTION: To enhance nursing students' critical thinking abilities, numerous educators have explored alternative teaching methods. While meta-analyses have confirmed that various approaches are effective in developing critical thinking, consensus regarding their comparative effectiveness remains elusive. Furthermore, few investigations have directly contrasted the outcomes across these methods, highlighting the necessity to undertake a comprehensive evaluation of their impact on nursing students' critical thinking skills. Accordingly, this study aims to assess the effects of six teaching methods on nursing students' critical thinking abilities. METHODS: A comprehensive literature search will be carried out up to May 2025 across various databases, such as PubMed, Embase, The Cochrane Library, Web of Science, OVID, CNKI, Wanfang Database and the China Biological Literature Database (CBM). The search strategy will specifically target randomised controlled trials meeting predefined inclusion criteria. Two independent reviewers will screen the selected studies and extract pertinent data. The methodological quality of the included studies will be assessed using the Cochrane risk of bias tool. A network meta-analysis will then be performed using Stata software, incorporating the following analytical components: heterogeneity, network evidence diagrams, publication bias plots, league tables, forest plots, subgroup analyses or meta-regression and sensitivity analyses. The Grading of Recommendations Assessment, Development and Evaluation (GRADE) system will be leveraged to appraise the overall quality of evidence related to critical thinking abilities across all compared interventions. ETHICS AND DISSEMINATION: No formal research ethics approval is required. The results will be submitted to a peer-reviewed journal for publication. PROSPERO REGISTRATION NUMBER: CRD42024618735.