Importance of a nurse being a critical thinker - Research Paper Example

Phobias and Addictions of the of the Introduction Critical thinking refers to a psychological process, multidimensional ability and a set of practices (Swansburg, 2002, p.3). Critical thinking constitutes of rational, result directed, methodical, decisive, and insightful thinking that is conducted with information obtained, analyzed and interpreted. Critical thinking helps in identifying best solutions for a problem or set of problems. Critical thinking and problem resolution are a part of the best clinical practices.

Critical thinking is the focal point of making judgments in a clinical environment. Critical thinking is even required to develop a plan for nursing, in this critical thinking process, various agents are included. These agents include: nurses, patients and their families, health care service providers (Rosdahl, 2008, p.358). The background of patients, nurses and various other individuals become a part of the stages of critical thinking process. The paper will cover the importance of the critical thinking process for nurses and how they use this process to provide a high degree of nursing services.

Body Nurses have to make use of critical thinking in all of their procedures such as home, delicate, community and extended care (Daniels, 2004, p.410). Nurses have to view the situation of all of their patients uniquely and dynamically. The main component of nurse’s critical thinking process is learning the situation of all patients before jumping to any conclusions. Once the information about a particular patient is obtain, nurses have to carefully analyze and interpret the information and after interpreting information, nurses have to come to a solution or a plan of action.

During the decision making stage of the critical thinking process, nurses have to implement their intellectual skills (Wilkinson, 2001, p.36). They use their intellect to make assumptions, to verify the reliability of information, to differentiate between information that is important and irrelevant, to make decisions in a timely manner and to determine how a decision will affect the patient. For example, when nurses obtain information about the family of a patient, they have to differentiate what information about the patient’s family history is relevant or irrelevant.

Nurses even have to ensure that the information provided to them by a patient is kept private and confidential and only information relevant to the situation is obtained otherwise the nurse is held responsible for infringing upon the patient’s privacy right. Nurses obtain experience and knowledge about the field of nursing from various settings such as professional and educational settings. Nurses have to apply this information in their critical thinking process to make correct and timely decisions.

Conclusion The process of developing critical thinking skills requires a lot of time and effort. Nurses have to ask various questions to themselves as well as the patients during the critical thinking process and they have to identify answers to these questions through the information provided by the patient and the information owned by nurses already. Nurses have to ensure that before jumping to any conclusions and judgments, they have to obtain all important information. Nurses even have to treat every patient and every situation individually and they should not try to apply prior information to solve newly learned issues.

References Daniels, R. (2004). Nursing fundamentals: Caring & clinical decision making. Australia: Delmar Learning. Rosdahl, C. B., & Kowalski, M. T. (2008). Textbook of basic nursing. Philadelphia: Lippincott Williams & Wilkins. Swansburg, R. C., Swansburg, R. J., & Swansburg, R. C. (2002). Introduction to management and leadership for nurse managers. Sudbury, Mass: Jones and Bartlett Publishers. Wilkinson, J. M. (2001). Nursing process and critical thinking. Upper Saddle River, N.J: Prentice Hall.