BACKGROUND: Clinical reasoning is a critical skill that nursing practitioners must develop. Positive patient outcomes have been linked to nurses with clinical reasoning skills. While experienced nurse practitioners often demonstrate clinical reasoning skills, evidence shows that these skills can be taught and mastered, even by less experienced nurses OBJECTIVE: To determine whether a cooperative clinical reasoning activity can aid nursing students in developing their clinical reasoning skills METHODS: A quasi-experimental, non-equivalent, pre-test-post-test control group method was used, employing an Outcome-present-state (OPT) worksheet and a marking rubric to assess the results. The study population consisted of 208 final-year nursing students who were purposively assigned to either the experimental group (n=84) or the control group (n=124 RESULTS: Participants in the experimental group showed higher clinical reasoning scores after engaging in cooperative clinical reasoning activities, compared with participants in the control group who did not participate (p=007 CONCLUSION: Clinical reasoning is a skill that can be developed through the deliberate inclusion of targeted activities in a nursing programme