A Reflection of Five Weeks of the Co-Operative Nursing Experience

However, critical thinking skills must being in nursing school. Institutions must help facilitate higher level of thinking to help evolve critical thinking skills in order to have the best outcomes for their patients. Better outcomes equal higher payouts for the business, so it is in everyone’s best interest to educate their staff and continue to strive for success.

The Joint Commission focuses on certain goals each year. For patient safety and positive outcomes, hospitals are required to follow certain standards. National Patient Safety Goals were established in 2002 to help identify areas of concern with patient safety. This group is made up by a panel of experts including nurses, doctors, pharmacists and many other healthcare professionals. They advise the Joint Commission on how to address these different patient safety issues. Two goals to be discussed are improving the accuracy of patient identification and medication safety. To improve patient

It is imperative that all members of the care team are able to quickly and accurately communicate the patients’ condition and needs to other members of the care team. Proper communication allows for better monitoring of the patients’ condition and allows the providers and pharmacists to more accurately assess the patients’ treatment needs. The implementation of electronic medical records (EMR), as Nightingale Hospital is currently researching, has been shown to greatly improve care team communication and patient outcomes by allowing easy, verifiable access to all the patients’ records. Implementation of an EMR system will provide a necessary foundation for a great improvement in staff and provider communication, resulting in improved outcomes for all patients, including those undergoing anticoagulation therapy. Specifically regarding anticoagulation therapy, EMR will allow other care team members, including other nurses, providers and pharmacists’ one place to look for patient histories, allergies, lab and other results and monitor, potential drug interactions and adjust medication levels with regard to patient specific needs. EMR will also allow for more accurate medication administration through

As the nurses who participated in a study (Jones & Cheek, 2003) overwhelmingly advised, there is no such thing as a typical day for a nurse. Nurses face new situations everyday and it is important that they can adjust their knowledge and skills accordingly. Critical thinking and reflection are essential skills because they can enhance nurses’ ability to solve problems and make sound decisions. Critical thinking skills enable nurses to identify multiple possibilities in clinical situations and alternatives to interventions; weigh the consequences of alternate actions; and make sound judgement and decisions (Brunt, 2005). Through reflection, nurses can examine their practice, explore feelings and reactions and connect new meanings to past experience (Brunt). Reflection can enhance self-awareness, foster professional satisfaction and growth and increase the possibility for change and improvement in nursing practice and therapeutic relationships (Thorne & Hayes, 1997).

Critical thinking is a nursing process that includes reflective practice, problem solving and decision making which are connected to one another. The definition of critical thinking is transferring and applying knowledge and skills in a new situation. The critical thinking is needed in a lot of aspects of the nurses’ job such as when the nurses need to provide the precise identification in the specific problems had by the patients. They need to be in detail and also critical to themselves in every time in order to be able to provide identification precisely. When you have the profession in nursing, it is important to be critical thinker. The nurses have the high responsibilities and their responsibilities are increasing from time to time.

Behaviors associated with nursing professionalism go far beyond how nurses practice in a clinical setting. Alidina describes professionalism as “a multidimensional concept that provides nurses with opportunities to grow personally and professionally (2013, p. 128). This shows that professionalism has many different components. Alidina also uses “Miller’s Wheel of Professionalism.” This model uses a wheel to represent different aspects of professionalism. The different behaviors that are represented are “adherence to code for nurses, community service orientation, Professional Organization Participation, autonomy and self-regulation, Publication and Communication, development and use of theory and research, and continuing education and competence (2013, p. 129-130).

Underlying both the clinical decision-making process and the nursing process is the skill of critical thinking. Critical thinking has been described as the ability to gather and process data in such a way as to arrive at the best conclusion using the filters of prior knowledge, experience and external resources to overcome personal emotions, biases, and assumptions. (This description was developed during NUR/300 class, University of Phoenix, S. Colorado, March 16, 2006) Note that critical thinking is described as a

The national league for nurses defines critical thinking in the nursing process as “a discipline specific, reflective reasoning process that guides a nurse in generating, implementing, and evaluating approaches for dealing with client care and professional concerns” (Kozier, 2008). This definition is imperative to help a nursing student learn how to think in terms of nursing care. Nursing students must achieve a comprehensive understanding of critical thinking in order to understand the nursing process. The purpose for this paper is for nursing students to learn how to use the nursing process, how to properly document their findings and assessments, and correctly implement APA formatting in a formal paper.

Critical thinking refers to the ability to think rationally and clearly. It enables one be able to think well and be able to solve problems in a systematic manner. It also plays a role in evaluating ideas and acts as a tool for self evaluation. In nursing, critical thinking for clinical decision making refers to the process of thinking in a logical and systematic manner. Nursing practitioners who are critical thinkers strive to be clear, accurate, significant, precise and logic when carrying out their daily activities ADDIN EN.CITE Mateo2009451(Mateo & Kirchhoff, 2009)4514516Mateo, M. A.Kirchhoff, K. T.Research for advanced practice nurses: From evidence to practice. 2009New York, NYSpringer( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_6" o "Mateo, 2009 #451" Mateo & Kirchhoff, 2009). Critical thinking in nursing involves some elements of thought. It involves being able to figure out a problem, issue or views of somebody else. The goal of thinking is to figure out what one hopes to accomplish ADDIN EN.CITE Sheridan19841096(Sheridan, Vredenburgh, & Abelson, 1984)1096109617Sheridan, John E.Vredenburgh, Donald J.Abelson, Michael A.Contextual Model of Leadership Influence in Hospital UnitsThe Academy of Management JournalThe Academy of Management Journal57-782711984Academy of Management00014273http://www.jstor.org/stable/255957( HYPERLINK l "_ENREF_7" o "Sheridan, 1984 #1096" Sheridan, Vredenburgh, & Abelson, 1984). Critical

Critical thinking used throughout the nation in nursing everyday to protect and treat patients in the most effective way. An example would be if a patient walked in to the hospital with a platelet count of 1, the nurse would know that they have a risk for bleeding and would place them on “risk for bleeding” protocols. Without critical thinking, the nurse would not know what to do. Critical thinking is a learned skill that every nurse should acquire, not only during his or her education, but also throughout his or her career.

As a nurse I will use my knowledge of critical thinking skills with in the nursing process: assessment, analysis, planning, implementation, and evaluation. Furthermore as a member of the nursing profession, I will assume accountability and responsibility for the quality of nursing care that I provide to clients, act as an advocate to promote quality health care for all clients, and take part in activities that promote the development and practice of professional nursing.

There were two questions developed for the purpose of this research. According to Mann (2012), the two questions were as following: (1) How do nursing students use critical thinking skills and clinical judgment to resolve a healthcare dilemma? (2) Does grand rounds as an educational strategy promote development of critical thinking and clinical judgment in nursing students?

The nursing process and Watson’s theory both provide a framework to promote critical thinking by the nurse so conclusions can be made and they can have a caring moment. This is completed by “assessment, plan, intervention, evaluation.” (Nursing Theories, 2012, p.4) The theory is well organized, not complex and “can be used to guide and improve practice.”(Nursing Theories, 2012, p.4)

The Nurse of the Future Nursing Core Competencies (NOF Core Competencies) were selected to show the correlation of competency based education and practice partnership. This is being done nationwide so new student nurses would be more prepared with critical thinking and competent learned skills during clinicals. It encourages many nurses to continue their education with some becoming Doctors of Nursing, Nurse Practitioners’, Educators, Managers, and many more specialties.

Critical thinking skills, decision-making and problem-solving are attributes that nurses must have in today's healthcare environment. Strategies such as the use of nursing theories are sometimes implemented in education of nurses (Oldenburg & Hung, 2010). When examining the decision making and problem solving utilization within nursing theories, the reason behind