Critical Thinking: A Key for Nurses Essay

Critical thinking is a term you will often here in regards to nursing education and the ability to be a successful nurse. Critical thinking is one of the most important skills of a nurse. Nurses must be able to constantly asses and analyze situations in order to prioritize what is the most important task to accomplish next. This is an ever changing situation in health care and especially in the Intensive Care Units.

The negligence of this incident had a negative impact on the patient’s family members. Approximately 25% of cases involving medical negligence involve poor nursing care. Another negative aspect was patient’s family follow up was poor resulting in lack of importance highlighted on the pressure wounds. Ashley (2003) states nurses can be sued for malpractice, this means he or she is being sued for “negligence”. Furthermore, the nursing health professionals can lose its credibility among a community as they failed to provide a holistic care for the patient. However, a positive outcome was nurses were able to reflect among this evidence based practice to assist in better quality in patient

Critical thinking does requires the application of knowledge and experience to identify patient’s problems and to direct clinical judgment and actions resulting in positive patient’s outcomes. Nurses use critical thinking skills when they reflect on knowledge derivative from other interdisciplinary subject areas such as the biophysical and behavioral sciences and the humanities in order to provide holistic nursing care. These skill are cultivate by nurses who display the virtues of critical thinking including independence of thought, curiosity, courage, humility, empathy and fair

Critical reflection is an indispensable tool used in evidence based nursing practice. Critical reflection is often a difficult concept to define as all health professionals interpret it in diverse ways. However, one definition of critical reflection is the revision of nursing practice experience so that it can be described, analysed and evaluated to use that knowledge to improve on future practice (Bulman & Schutz, 2013). Critical reflection is essential for nursing practice because it ensures patient safety and provides holistic care. This assignment will discuss in further detail a description of an event, a reflection of thoughts and feelings and an evaluation of the positive and negative sides of the incident from both the nurse's and the patient's viewpoint and the consequences. Followed by an analysis of what can be taken away from the event to further improve future nursing practice as well as what can be done to improve one's own learning and develop an action plan using new knowledge.

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).

In addition to these characteristics, nursing also involves critical thinking. "Critical thinking is the active, organized, cognitive process used to carefully examine one's thinking and the thinking of others. It involves the use of the mind in forming conclusions, making decisions, drawing inferences, and reflecting" (Perry,

The co-operative nursing assignment has given me the opportunity to use my critical thinking, decision-making, leadership, and clinical nursing expertise learned throughout the RN-BSN program. “The fostering of critical thinking as one of the terminal learning goals of nursing education based on the idea that critical thinking is important not only in the nursing workplace, but also in nursing education” (Shin, Jung, Shin & Kim, 2006, p. 233). My

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.

In other words, critical thought is a skill acquired through experience; in this instance, it is gained from clinical practice. I envision myself using critical thinking when assessing my clients, administering medication, enacting physician orders, and reviewing nursing recommendations.

How often, and under what circumstances, do you ask questions that start with “But what if…?” or “It depends…?”

The major study variables in this investigation were critical thinking and clinical judgment skill of nursing students. Critical thinking was operationally defined with the ATI Critical Thinking Test and clinical judgment was operationally defined with the Lasater’s Clinical Judgment Rubric (Mann, 2012). The independent variable was identified as the Level II baccalaureate nursing students. The dependent variable was identified as the critical thinking and clinical judgment skills of the nursing students. The demographic variables included the gender and age of the

Critical thinking and clinical reasoning are similar in the fact that each term represents a set of methods that guide the nurse to reliable evidence-based practice while delivering care. Critical thinking and clinical reasoning are centered on knowledge base that is associated with the discipline of nursing. With each concept, the nurse must have an existing developed knowledge base in which to apply each concept to. Nurses apply critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills when patient care decisions are made. With both critical thinking and clinical reasoning, information about the patient is collected and examined. They work together to produce clinical judgment. They both direct nursing care to meet patients’ needs resulting in higher quality of care and better patient outcomes.

Critical thinking is defined as a disciplined, self directed thinking that meets appropriate intellectual standards within a particular mode or domain of thinking (Paul and Elder, 2014). In Nursing, the possession of this important skill helps a nurse to assess a given situation, identify the main problem, determine a perfect solution and implement an effective method of dealing with the problem.

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