How Is Critical Thinking Used Today?

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.

“Nurses are more than caregivers in today’s healthcare settings. They are teachers, advocates and pioneers in improving healthcare. They are stepping out of the old model and taking ownership for changes in healthcare. Nurses are developing their own scientific research programs to improve patient care. They are playing a pivotal role in healthcare reform. Nurses are becoming leaders, not followers in healthcare reform.”

Castledine, G (2010) in Critical thinking is crucial in British Journal of Nursing 19 (4) pp271

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.

In a study published in the May 2008 issue of the Journal of Nursing Administration, Dr. Linda Aiken and her contemporaries presented their findings which showed a “strong link between nurse education level and patient care outcomes”. The researchers found that “every 10% increase in the proportion of BSN educated staff on the hospital staff was associated with a 4% decrease in the risk of patient death”. The study concluded that employing nurses from bachelor’s degree programs rather than from two year associate’s degree programs could produce a considerable enhancement in patient care. Aiken and her colleagues claimed that nurses with a higher level of education tend to be better at critical thinking, which is a critical part in nursing practice.

The nursing professional faces a myriad of decisions on a daily basis. The effectiveness of the decision-making process is crucial to ensuring positive outcomes in the clinical setting. If the nursing process is misunderstood or misapplied to the decision-making process by a failure to use critical thinking skills, the results can be catastrophic to the anticipated outcomes. Furthermore, an immaturity in critical thinking may influence decisions because of insufficient knowledge and experience. This paper will explore the role of critical thinking and the nursing process in making clinical decisions. Additionally, clinical maturity will be addressed as a key component of critical thinking

Chang, M. J., Chang, Y. J., Kuo, S. H., Yang, Y. H. and Chou, F. H. (2011). Relationships between critical thinking ability and nursing competence in clinical nurses. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20 (21–22), 3224–3232.

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.

The level of critical thinking endowed in a nurse trained at BSN level is far higher than one trained at the ADN level. The California Critical Thinking Disposition Inventory (CCTDI) and California Critical Thinking Skills Test (CCTST) conducted a study to test the

Critical thinking and clinical judgment are important skills that professional nurses use in every day clinical setting. In 2012, a mix method qualitative study by Dr. Jeanne Mann was done to evaluate the effectiveness of educational strategy to develop clinical judgment skills in nursing students. In this study, the population was identified as volunteered Level II baccalaureate nursing students from a Midwest nursing program. The variables identified in this article are the relation between critical thinking and clinical judgment. The title of the article clearly indicated the focus of the study and created an interest in reading the research due to nurses utilize their ability to critical think and

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