Critical Thinking In Nursing Practice 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.

Critical reflection is vital to develop evidence based practice for safe and quality approaches to professional nursing practice. Nursing professionals should critically reflect on events to identify what health professionals might do to improve their practice and reduce the risk of a similar error. Reflective practice can help to learn from their mistakes, be empowered and most importantly to deliver best possible care to patient as nurses must work closely with their patients to develop a therapeutic relationship. Critical reflection is a valuable skill to ensure patient centred care. This practice promotes personal development by enhancing students’ self-awareness, their sense of community, and their sense of their own capacities for

Reflective practice is an important component of all nurse education programmes. The Nursing and Midwifery Council's (NMC) The Code: Standards of Conduct, Performance and Ethics for nurses and Midwives (NMC, 2008), states that nurses must continue to keep knowledge and skills up to date during

Nursing practice requires both critical thinking and clinical reasoning. Critical thinking is the process of deliberate higher level thinking to define a patient’s problem, examine the evidence-based practice in caring for the patient’s, and make options in the delivery of optimal care. Critical thinking involves the demarcation of statements of fact, judgment, and opinion. The progression of critical thinking requires the nurse to think imaginatively, use reflection, and engage in logical thinking (Alfaro-LeFevre, 2013). Critical thinking is a vital skill needed for the recognition of patient’s

Reflection is cognitive in relation to changes of things we do which is not a technique or curriculum element. Reflective practice enables practitioners to learn from their experiences and what they do, how they do it, what they say in relation to their home and work, in the significant of others and wider society and culture. Nurses who engage in some form of activity are set out by regulatory authorities indicate an adoption with the Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council, (ANMC). Competency standards for registered nurses (2005), in the early 1990’s Australian Nursing and Midwifery Council, (ANMC) had first adopted the national competency standards for registered nurses. Establishment of the organization was in 1992, to develop a national approach to nursing and Midwifery regulation. To ensure and deliver safe competent care, the (ANMC) worked together with the state and territory nursing and midwifery authorities (NMRAS) to produce national standard.

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.

After reading the Nurse of he Future Nursing Core Competencies (NOF), I believed it was created to help nurses used critical thinking when delivering care. Being a nurse had empowered me to know the important of critical thinking when caring for patients. “Nurses use critical thinking to integrate objective data with knowledge gained from an assessment of the subjective experiences of patients and groups, and to apply the best available evidence and research data to the processes of diagnosis and treatment”.

Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice There have been several research studies identifying the importance of critical thinking for nurses in clinical practice and the effects on patient care and outcomes. As stated in Assessing Individual Frontline Nurse Critical Thinking," there is widespread agreement among nursing leaders that critical thinking is a frontline nurse competency essential to providing safe and effective care." (Berkow, 2011). Studies continue to identify this in several countries, although the ways to achieve critical thinking varies. The level to which critical thinking should be expected and taught varies in the opinions of researchers.

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.

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

In today’s current school systems, the question of whether or not schools are correctly teaching students the right curriculum is coming up for debate. In the Article,"Teaching Critical Thinking by Marcia Clemmitt, she goes into extensive research of the U.S. Department of Education’s crisis of standardized testing. Most learning activities include standardized testing which lacks many students to express creative and critical thinking. Critical thinking is defined as the examination and evaluation of ideas, events and arguments in their contexts which introduces students to interrogate assumptions and identifying biases (Clemmitt)Pure critical thinking involves investigating a text more than just memorizing, but to apply theirself in other ways of techniques, meaning schools should stimulate more analytical methods of teaching. This would not only free students from a sheltered test culture,but will allow students to think in a deeper,more passionate way than before.

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 terms often used interchangeably throughout the history of nursing. However, they are not the same, and distinguishing the difference amongst them is important. The purpose of this paper is to define critical thinking and clinical reasoning, discuss each concepts similarities and differences, as well as share this author’s perspective on how critical thinking and clinical reasoning have developed and evolved throughout my own career, guiding my clinical practice decisions.

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)

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.