Critical Thinking Nursing

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

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

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

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.

Nurses make decisions daily while preparing and conveying care in their scope of practice. Appropriate and efficacious decision-making includes critical thinking. Critical thinking is a major component in the nursing profession as an essential nursing skill. Critical thinking is examining underlying assumptions, interpreting and evaluating arguments, imagining and exploring alternatives, and developing reflective criticism for the purpose of reaching a reasoned, justifiable conclusion (Sullivan, 2013, p. 100). Additionally, it is also the root of problem solving.

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.

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

Attitude, the second component of the critical thinking model, profoundly affects the application of a nurse’s knowledge base to his or her treatment of patients. Obtaining an attitude of a fair-minded individual can make or break one’s relationship with the patient and the amount of care that can be provided. When a nurse displays actions that are free of judgment, such as the act of suspending one’s own opinions to truly understand the other point of view, this is called a critical thinking attitude. According to Paul (1993), there are 11 attitudes that can identify a successful critical thinker: confidence, thinking independently, fairness, responsibility, accountability, risk-taking, discipline, perseverance, creativity, curiosity, integrity, and humility. Out of these 11, having risk-taking qualities may seem like a dangerous attribute for a healthcare professional.

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

Two attitudes of successful critical thinking, risk-taking, and creativity, when combined are considered crucial for patient self-care advocacy. With creativity, one can find environmental, social, and clinical solutions outside of the usual standards of practice to help the patient achieve Orem ’s idea of self-care independence (Potter, Perry, Stockert & Hall, 2015). For example, when a patient who received partially compensatory care reveals to the nurse that he feels comfortable conducting an act of self-care that he was unable to previously achieve, the nurse must show risk-taking and creativity to encourage a supervised demonstration of the task. Acts of support such as these allow the patient to develop “self-care confidence” which is

In this essay, I will share my experience when I was still a novice in the nursing profession and how my understanding of critical thinking has radically transformed, the importance of critical thinking skills in this profession and useful ways on how to develop this specific skill.