How Nurses Can Use Crital Thinking
How Nurses Can Use Critical Thinking And/Or Reasoning In Nursing Practice When Making Clinical Decsions For A Group Of Patients
The Christ College of Nursing and Health Sciences
Nursing 206 Section C
November 3, 2014
How Nurses Can Use Critical Thinking And/Or Reasoning In Nursing Practice When Making Clinical Decsions For A Group Of Patients
During some students first experience as a student nurse on the clinical floor they are slowly introduced into the environment. They follow and observed a nurse while she completes her duties, while they complete tasks that are normally completed by the patient care assistant (PCA). During thier second clinical experience they start to take care of a patient while completing some duties of a nurse. On the next clinical experience they are given an additional patient and even more duties and responsibilities. As they move forward and start to enter thier final nursing classes they might begin to mentally prepare themselves for becoming a registared nurse. They will no longer only have one or two patients, they must be ready to provide care for multiple patients. They may start to ask themselves how will they be able to do this. The answer, by using critical thinking and/or clinical reasoning for time management and prioritilazation of patient care.
As novice nurse they will not expect to walk onto the unit being able to complete every task swiftly, it may take a little time. Not only will they have patients to care for , they may have other tasks that the clinical manager may expect them to complete. Some floors have huddles each morning in which the members of the unit gather as the charge nurse discuss patients that are high fall risk, patients that may have heavy needs, or other general information that may need to be distributed. They will also have to get report on thier patients from the nurses from the privious shift before they can begin. All of these things take time to complete leaving them with less time for patient care. It will not be suprising if they become a litlle overwhelmed. They can use critical thinking and/or clinical reasoning for time management in what is called “setting S.M.A.R.T. objectives”. The article “Career development: time management” by Adrian Amhurst, states the objectives help plan and track time by setting Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and Timely objectives.
Some simple things to do are completing documentation while doing the task. If they wait they may waste time trying to remember the steps they completed earlier and the results that they discovered, possibably questioning themselves. Before going into a patients room they can think about what they are going to be doing. Will they have everything they need? Is there another task they can complete while in the room to prevent having to come back sooner than needed. They can anticipate what they will see before they enter the room. They can look ahead to save themselves a trip by being prepared and by clustering patient care.
Another way that they can use critical thinking and/or clinical reasoning when making clinical decisions is by prioritizing patient care. A simple way to do this is by using delegation. In the book Nursing Delegation, Setting Priorities, and Making Patient Care Assignments it suggest to use what it calls the five steps of the decision making process. First, indentify the need for a decision. Second, determine the goal or outcome. Third, identify alternatives or actions, and list the benefits, and consequences of each. Fourth, choose an Alternnative. And fifth, evaluate the alternative choosen. By using this process the nurse can choose safe and effective tasks to delegate to the pca to help care for patients.