Critical thinking is important in nursing, to enable one to make the best choices for patient care. As part of your education, you were taught about critical thinking examples and given tools for assessment, diagnosis, planning, implementation and evaluation.
These are key competencies that must be continually enhanced as a novice nurse enters into practice. Critical thinking is vital in ensuring quality care for patients and thus should become an automatic reflex in your nursing profession.
In nursing, what is critical thinking?
Critical thinking in nursing involves identification of the problem, discovery of the best solution and application of clinical decision-making skills towards its resolution. Next, reflect on your actions to evaluate if they achieved the desired outcome or if another approach would have been better. Remember that there are no universal solutions for patients. You must determine what is best for each specific patient.
How Important is Critical Thinking for Nurses?
A healthcare professional might actually be the very first person to notice a change in her patient’s conditions. Critical thinking is being objective about these changes. Do not judge, decide or make decisions based on your ideas only. Critical thinking allows you to recognize your patients and their needs better; hence improving care and results. A research investigation carried out at John Hopkins University revealed that “medical errors” are responsible for 10% of deaths annually in America making them the third leading cause of death.”
At the same time, Dr. Martin Makary from Johns Hopkins mentioned that diagnostic errors, medical mistakes as well as lack of safety measures might turn into a tragic death. Even doctors make blunders . The nurses can reduce such errors using critical thinking skills. According to Ersilia Pompilio, a pediatric nurse specialist, nurses should question everything including doctors’ orders. Utilizing more time with their patients enables them to identify small changes that physicians might ignore. If these transformations are tackled it will ultimately lead to improved medical care being provided in hospitals.
How Nurses Can Apply and Develop Critical Thinking Skills
Thinking critically in nursing gets better with practice and education. Knowledge buildup together with taking care of real patients’ situations can boost your ability to handle nursing problems.
There are 5 quick ways to improve your ability to think critically
Develop an endless thirst for knowledge
Always take part in education and professional development so that you are up-to-date with the latest techniques. This constant education will help you make intelligent choices in challenging circumstances.
Put reflection into practice
Use a few minutes each day to think about what went right and what could have gone wrong. By doing the process of reflection, you get to know yourself better- your strengths, weaknesses as well as any personal prejudices all which will guide your decisions in the future.
Be open-minded
Don’t think that you always have the best answer. speak with other nurses, instructors or even colleagues in order to get different points of view thus improving your ability to think critically.
Apply critical-thinking techniques
Using tools like nurse steps or a SWOT study helps in organizing information, evaluating alternatives, and recognizing issues. These helpful tools provide structure during the process of thinking as well as when making decisions.
Show curiosity
Keep asking yourself questions if current medical methods work and depend on the best evidence available. Interest encourages a single person to find better answers that enhance patient outcomes. Critical- thinking skills are essential for showing effective and secure treatment. By focusing on these techniques, you can deal with the challenges associated with nursing better.
Nursing Critical Thinking Examples
To deal properly with patient care, thinking critically becomes essential among nurses. For the majority of cases, nurses are able to identify symptoms of a decrease in condition. You have to be able to ask themselves questions and make correct decisions. The nurses should therefore take time to find out the root cause of issues like sudden increase in heart rate prior to reaching out to doctors. While someone’s parent calls concerning their child’s high fever, they must be able analyze the situation and give the best plan of action.
The whole context issues greatly i.e., for example, if even though medication, the children’s asthma becomes worse then the nurse may request for medicine to come in order to know what the problem is. Nurses have to be extremely careful in choosing which patients need immediate treatment and how they will organize their daily changes. Staff nurses are in charge of drugs as well as organization of care. In case a drug may cause harm to a patient with a condition called autoimmune disease, the nurse can suggest stopping it until after a consultation with a specialist.
In emergency cases like when a general anesthesia machine is not working properly, nurses must decide quickly how to repair or change to other methods available in order to ensure the safety of patients. When technological devices don’t work, nurses have to depend on their basic skills which include by hand assessing health indicators where the monitors fail. It is with such situations where we can see how critical thinking supports the practice of nursing with respect to delivering effective care and handling unexpected situations.
Bottom line
Critical thinking is essential for the ability of a nurse to provide a patient with excellent medical treatment. Healthcare professionals who constantly try to improve those skills are more capable to handle unexpected situations, make carefully planned choices, and achieve the best possible outcomes for patients.
Some methods to improve critical thinking include valuing lifelong learning, reflecting, accepting many different opinions, putting on established research steps, and developing desire.
FAQs
Two things are needed for critical thinking in nursing to be successful; these are both attitudes and skills. Attitudes stand for the mental habits and values which impact how decisions are made while on the other hand, skills refer to the techniques used for solving and evaluating problems.
Practical nurses, registered nurses, and advanced nurse practitioners are part of this group. In the field of nursing, every person uses critical thinking skills to make choices in crucial situations and give excellent care.
The nurses use thinking critically for successful patient care. It demands an understanding about symptoms’ causes, collecting relevant information and making quick informed decisions. Critical thinking helps nurses to identify problems and decide what actions are best for the wellness of their patients.
