The major movements in healthcare have created a change in the clinical experiences. Because of these changes, the Instituted of Medicine’s report stated that the educational process of nursing has created medical personnel with deficiencies in their critical thinking skills. The report also states that because of this lack of critical thinking, new graduate nurses fail to recognize the deterioration of a patient, which results in poor patient outcomes (Robert, Tilley, & Peterson, 2014).
Nursing is simply not something that is done by the book. Therefore, teaching nursing students by power points fosters regurgitation of an overload of information. Whereas, nursing is a skill set with complex knowledge that allows nurses to respond rapidly with ease in crisis situations. According to Benner, educators are producing students that are unprepared to meet the demands of practice. The educational methods leave students feeling that practice in the healthcare system is far from the learned classroom educational. To bridge this gap, educators must develop a consistent and evidence-based practice to instill fluid use of skill now how, medical knowledge, and judgement as well as be able to perform an ethical action to promote patient outcomes (Handwerker, 2012, & Bevan, Joy, Keely & Brown, 2015).
For the last decade, simulation labs and debriefing have become the norm in the teaching-learning continuum. The phase of debriefing is a critical component of the process. The
interactions act as a whetstone for the critical mind. Authors, Elaine Simpson RN and Mary Courtney RN state
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.
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”.
According to Pivec (2012), “Reflection is often a part of debriefing” (p. 9), debriefing in the simulation was a method that students reflected their experiences and knowledge after simulation (Pivec, 2012). Likewise, Shinnick et al. (2011) explained that debriefing, a guided reflection after simulation produced by educators, was a crucial process of simulation that was the time for students to reflect and explore their learning. The appropriate time for debriefing was immediately after finishing their action in case scenario (Pivec, 2012; Shinnick et al, 2011). The length of debriefing time should be two or three times of simulation’s times that scheduled by educators
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.
Over the course of this semester, the clinical experience has provided nursing students with the hands-on opportunity to take what has been taught, and apply it to real-world experiences. Clinical rotations allow the student to have patient interactions, practice essential skills and discover different health conditions among diverse patients. The purpose of this paper is to build critical thinking skills by utilizing peer reviewed, professional, nursing literature and the nursing process to develop a plan of care individualized for an acutely ill patient encountered during this clinical rotation.
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.
Over the years there have been vast changes in healthcare that require nurses to go above and beyond in their level of expertise in technology and scientific knowledge (Palos, 2014). Nurses have to evolve with those changes, therefore they must utilize educational tools and develop skills to stay current with the advancements that hospitals require for practice (Palos, 2014). Palos (2014) also found that nurses have a responsibility to use their critical thinking skills, make sound clinical judgments, and apply evidence-based nursing
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
Lemone, P., Burke, K., Levett-Jones, T., Dwyer, T., Moxham, L., Reid-Searl, K., ... & Luxford, Y. (2014). Medical-surgical Nursing: Critical Thinking for Person-centred Care (3rd ed.). Melbourne, VIC: Pearson
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 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 simulation environment offers a safe place for students to practice critical scenarios and gain confidence in proscribed settings (Decker, Sportsman, Puetz, & Billings, 2008). Simulation helps faculty to facilitate learning which meets one of the NLN’s core competencies. Simulation also enhances communication through emerging leadership and delegation skills, and builds teamwork through goal and priority setting (Dillon, Noble, & Kaplan, 2009). Therefore, according to Lasater (2007) simulation is highly effective as an adjunct teaching strategy in clinical 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
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