CRITICAL THINKING IN NURSING
INTRODUCTION
The history of nursing profession has moved from providing physical care to delivering appropriate, effective, and holistic patient care. Nurses are viewed as a liaison in the health care team and respected by patients more for her knowledge and judgment skills in the present complex health care environment. Critical thinking helps nurses to diagnose, identify, intervene and apply the problem-solving strategies in clinical practice. Identifying ways to enhance and nurture critical thinking in nursing practice will transform nurses as leaders and advocates.
USAGE IN CLINICAL PRACTICE Application of critical thinking in clinical practice is of great value in all healthcare departments. Some examples
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E. Boyer identifies four main domains in the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching (Conard, & Pape, 2014). Identifying peer-reviewed, research articles, assimilating the found information and synthesizing new ideas based on one’s knowledge or expertise are critical attributes for a critical reader. Integrating the acquired knowledge by proposing possible, evidence-based applications and teaching nurses to implement that effectively reflect critical thinking in practice. Nurses should identify their strengths and limitations, and rationalize their actions with the concrete knowledge to develop their competence. Nurses with honesty, self-discipline and ability to accept suggestions or criticisms develop critical thinking naturally (Walden University Writing Center, 2010).
SUMMARY
The critical thinking among nurses is known to bring out best patient outcomes. Present nurses work in fast-paced, task-directed environment due to lack of staff, high patient acuity, and fast patient turnover (Berkow, Virkstis, Stewart, Aronson & Donohue, 2011). Expecting nurses to apply critical thinking in this environment is a huge challenge for every health care facility. Providing an environment with opportunity and growth for nurses will yield both critical thinkings for nurses and nurse scholars for the
Another different is the use of their critical thinking skills. Registered nursing programs have demonstrate the prove that critical thinking is being taught in nursing schools. The level
A family nurse practitioner could apply theory, information from research, and knowledge learned in class to formulate patient education strategies as well as to create patient education material. The nursing profession advocates for evidence-based practice. This requires the nurse to know, in order to provide proper care. Therefore, it is important to link research to nursing practice because the data collected through research makes it easier to make clinical decisions (Pipe, Wellik, Buchda, Hansen, & Martyn, 2005). An understanding of nursing theory would also prove important in handling nursing dilemmas by offering a systematic guide for handling nursing issues.
According to Barrett, when attempting to define what nursing science is, it remains quite a mystery. With various different worldviews, with wide range of theoretical and practical knowledge evolving over time, has made it a challenge to come with a universal definition. To ensure that nurses are current with the best practical and evidence based practices, it is important to focus on nursing-discipline-specific knowledge. Fawcett stresses the importance of using nursing discipline-specific knowledge in the form of explicit nursing conceptual models, because it governs the foundation of what and why nurses do what they do. Fawcett makes it clear that nurses must develop adequate knowledge in order to apply new evidence based treatments and
Nurses are uniquely positioned to be present at virtually every level of our health care system, nurses work at the community centers, clinics, hospitals and nurses are also present not only as bedside clinicians but also at the level of management, in the form of nurse managers, supervisors all the way up to the Director of nurses. We have a unique vantage point of the real state of affairs of our health care system, with the push for higher education and training, nurses will start to occupy more influential
This knowledge opens up an endless number of opportunities for professional growth. Studies show BSN prepared nurses have critical thinking
Ask any healthcare professional if critical thinking is a necessary tool to have while working with patients and the answer would be an overwhelming YES! IF you ask those nurses how did they develop critical thinking the answer varies, Nurses would not be able to provide sound patient care without book knowledge which aids in critical thinking. In the article Brain Power: Critical thinking skills are nursing’s stock and trade (2011), the author points out that critical thinking is not the same as problem solving. Critical thinking is the process of taking information and applying it to a situation to solve or improve. As an operating room nurse, I utilize critical thinking on a daily basis.
Theoretical thinking is essential to nursing and helps guide nursing practice. Theory is defined as “the creation of relationships among two or more concepts to form a specific view of a phenomenon” (Higgins & Moore, 2012, p. 282 para. 2). It is made up of four theories, which include meta-theory, grand theory, middle range theory, and micro theory.
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 problems and the execution of interventions to endorse effectual care outcomes (Bittencourt & Crossetti, 2012).
Integrating humanities and sciences in nursing is important and allow individuals to enhance their knowledge and critical thinking skills in their nursing practice. The information I learn in this course has taught me that evidence-based research findings can be used to shape future practice settings going forward. As a change agent, I will change and implement new evidence-based care to my practice to deliver high-quality
Integrative thinking is a relatively new concept in nursing administration. Integrative thinking is a concept simply defined as serving or intending to unify separate things and thinking is defined as thoughtful: reflective. Even more recently integrative thinking has been used in nursing education to aid in the teaching of critical thinking. The concept of integrative thinking described by Martin 2008 is thinking that allows an individual to extract the better of two opposing models to formulate an almost entirely new and improved model or concept. (Dearlove, D., and Crainer, S. 2008)
They identified six common patterns in their data analysis. Three of those patterns show a distinct difference between BSN and ADN nurses. When compared to ADN nurses, BSN nurses perform better in situations requiring intuitive or critical thinking and take a more holistic view of the patient. ADN nurses have more trouble moving out of their ‘thinking comfort zone’. BSN nurses were more likely to engage in evidence based practice and research.
The analyzing, evaluating and critiquing theories is helpful and important when using particular theory and will apply it in specific area. The purpose of analyzing, evaluating and critiquing theories is to determine the weaknesses and strengths of a particular theory, to determine the need to theory improvement and to assess the theory relevance and applicability to particular filed. In nursing dripline, analyzing, evaluating and critiquing theories is assist to determine if the selected theory is works and useful or not in nursing practice (McEwen & Wills, 2014). Also, to assess the applicability of the theory to the nursing education and practice and research. There are a big different between grand theories and middle range theories.
4). The clinical reasoning cycle assists nursing students in identifying important issues for an individual patient and allows the student to look at the situation from a holistic point of view (Meissner 2011, p. 88). This process of critically analysing and using the memory enables the student to develop experience and a deeper understanding of nursing
I firmly believe that an educated and empowered nurse provides the best nursing care at all times. Similarly, I would carry out numerous research projects in the field of nursing to determine the primary causes of common illness. It is indeed prudent to note that achieving all these things requires the support of all the stakeholders in the nursing
This is a misconception. Critical thinking is very good with considering "out-of-the-box", testing agreement and seeking after less well known approaches. In the event that anything, Critical thinking is a vital piece of creativity in light of the fact that we require critical thinking to assess and enhance our imaginative plans. What is the importance of Critical Thinking? Critical thinking is very important in the new knowledge economy.