Objective To design and develop clinical thinking training platform for nursing students and explore its application effect on clinical thinking ability of higher vocational nursing students. Methods The clinical thinking training platform for nursing students in higher vocational colleges was designed with common clinical symptoms as the main line and nursing procedures as the framework. In the practical course of comprehensive nursing training，the platform was used to assist the teaching of 304 students（experimental group） in Grade 2018，and 325 students（control group） in Grade 2017 were taught with the traditional clinical case analysis method. The OSCE score of clinical thinking ability and the score of self-directed learning ability of the students in the two groups were compared after the course. Results The OSCE score of clinical thinking ability and self-directed learning ability of the experimental group were significantly higher than those of the control group（P<0.05）. Conclusion The constructed nursing clinical thinking training platform has good application value，which is helpful to improve the clinical thinking ability and self-directed learning ability of nursing students.