Critical Thinking For Decision Making

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 skills are essential for a person in a career that requires the knowledge of anatomy and physiology. For example, on a daily basis physicians encounter situations in which there are multiple solutions or treatments. The physician must determine the solution that will provide the best outcome for the patient. Ten patients might have the exact same symptoms, however each patient has different medical issues or other circumstances that need to be considered. The physician must recognize that the course of treatment for one patient might not be appropriate for another. Strong critical thinking skills will allow the physician to quickly and confidently assess situations and make the best care decision in each unique scenario. In addition, it is important for the physician to use creative thinking; brainstorming on all possible treatment options, doing things a different way and thinking outside the box can lead to a positive patient outcome that might not have otherwise occurred.

Healthcare is a complex business. Highly specialized knowledge is required to make life and death decisions, in a system with many moving parts. Nurses are important in today’s healthcare system. Nurses are the largest group of healthcare workers and spend the most time direct time with patients. Americans have identified nurses as having the highest honesty and ethical standards for the last 14 years ("Gallop Poll," 2015). This adds up to a system and patients and a profession that makes significant demands on today’s nurses. Critical thinking and reasoning has been identified as an essential skill set that nurses must possess. How are nurses prepared to meet these demands and expectations and develop the critical thinking skills that

Alfaro-LeFevre, R. (2013). Critical thinking, clinical reasoning, and clinical judgment : A practical approach (Fifth ed.).

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.

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

Many times, time and perseverance is the key to the best result possible. But like Gary Collins said “We can try to avoid making choices by doing nothing, but even that is a decision. Therefore, decision making is in us relentlessly whether we want it or not.

Critical thinking is a major component of the nursing process. Critical thinking is define as, “that mode of thinking—about any subject, content, or problem—in which the thinker improves the quality of his or her thinking by skillfully taking charge of the structures inherent in thinking and imposing intellectual standards upon them” (Paul and Eder, 2012). Nurses who critically think about their patients have a better chance of solving the patient’s problems quickly and successfully. Critically thinking nurses are engaged, “in a process of constant evaluation, redirection, improvement, and increased efficiency (Black, 2014, p. 154). A nurse must ask herself questions and review the details after her interaction with

There are many descriptions of critical thinking, but what it really boils down to is quality patient care (Kearney-Nunnery, 2012). By utilizing critical thinking an action plan is developed, and in nursing, doing nothing is not a choice for quality patient care. In an article written for teh journal Nursing Education Perspectives, it was noted that registered nurses need a strong skill set that includes critical thinking in order to approach clinical situations (Newton, 2013). This skill set comes with time and experience.

Making sound and client-centered clinical decisions in an area that demands accountability and evidence-based practice requires not only scientific knowledge, but also a deep knowledge of the practice of one’s profession and of what it means to be human in the world of combined strength and vulnerability that is health care.

We are learning how to critically think in different situations that our patients and us as future nurses may be placed in. Critical thinking is used to recognize a problem, determine the best resolution, and choosing the most effective system of reaching that result. We use critical thinking to produce nursing care plans that help guide us to a nursing diagnosis. It also directs us to the interventions

Critical thinking is when you think about a situation with a purpose and focusing on he problem. It calls on your experience, it incorporates creativity, analysis, and priority, and sorting to deal with a problem. Clinical reasoning is a more narrow or specific form of critical thinking. It is used when specific problems comes up, like which patient needs to be seen first or which patient is going to need more care. And clinical judgement is the end result of the critical thinking. It is a final decision on how to proceed. The three reasons why critical thinking skills are essential for students and nurses are 1) solving problems; 2) helping with test-taking; and 3) self-improvement and managing stress.

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 incredibly important in decision making (Elder, 2007). It guides our ability to make informed decisions based off information gathered and viewed critically. When it falls into disuse, mistakes are made. Decisions become subject to bias or misinformation. This is why it is especially important to critically think about political leaders, both when voting for them and when they are already in office. Political leaders, especially in the United States of America, are held to a higher standard of accountability. Since they make decisions on behalf of citizens, it is important for those citizens to make sure that information is expressed accurately, honestly, and comes from reliable sources.

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