Critical thinking skills remain one of the top requirements for nurses in order to adequately deal with patients diagnosed with growing comorbidities, all to improve quality of care. Critical thinking skills are now considered a core competency for all educational nursing programs in the United States. The purpose of this qualitative descriptive study was to explore how graduate nurses in the South of Texas describe their experiences with critical thinking skills. The study was guided by Aziza's Critical Thinking Theory which discussed higher learning and critical thinking. The study addressed "How do graduate nurses discover, describe, and integrate critical thinking skills into their profession?" Upon reviewing the literature, a gap existed regarding graduate nurses' experiences with critical thinking skills. The study used a sample of 391 graduate nurses from two community colleges in South Texas. From the target 391 participants, 48 participated in a demographic questionnaire, a 10-question questionnaire, and 10 participated in interviews. Thematic qualitative data analysis provided relevant patterns and themes from the data collected during the questionnaires and interviews. The findings of this study revealed 5 themes described by the participants experiences. In conclusion this study shows how critical thinking skills can be improved upon in nursing school as well as during hospital orientation to improve and benefit quality of care for patients. Recommendations for future research are presented. [The dissertation citations contained here are published with the permission of ProQuest LLC. Further reproduction is prohibited without permission. Copies of dissertations may be obtained by Telephone (800) 1-800-521-0600. Web page: http://www.proquest.com.bibliotheek.ehb.be/en-US/products/dissertations/individuals.shtml.]