Describe critical thinking in nursing in your own words applying your insights with the

course concepts

Critical reasoning help nurses understand the challenges facing patients and make thoughtful,

smart decisions on how to execute treatment plans for those patients. It allows them to solve

challenges by collecting data and analyzing solutions before selecting the right course of action

(Hawkins et al., 2019).

The Critical Thinking Model offers a visual description of critical thinking skills that can be used

by nurses to align nursing learning with nursing practice. Nurses are obliged to:

 Build their vital characteristics of thought, such as imagination, persistence and trust.

 To develop their analytical abilities and competences, search out learning opportunities

and experiential awareness

 Build their leadership skills and competencies such as teamwork, dispute resolution,

embracing and learning from constructive criticism.

 Train your technological abilities until they are second nature.

Nurses are expected to think objectively in new fields such as economics, budgeting, staffing,

strategic planning, and assurance of efficiency. Nurse administrators should not strategically

make day-to-day decisions without clear thought capacity, with a view to advancing the

organization's objectives.

Lastly, nurses can become transformational leaders through critical thinking abilities. In

hospitals and other areas where they operate, they will test theories, gain a more robust view of

the root causes of challenges, and create more innovative solutions to daily problems. Simply

put, nurses can fall back on reactive, automated responses to issues without these skills and miss
the multitude of opportunities to make visionary and goal-driven improvements. Critical thought

and reasoning help nurses understand the challenges facing patients and make thoughtful, smart

decisions on how to execute treatment plans for those patients. It allows them to solve challenges

by collecting data and analyzing solutions before selecting the right course of action (Hawkins et

al., 2019).

Reflect and analyze a personal nursing experience and indicate how to improve their

clinical reasoning in the clinical situation (e.g how you made a decision and what you would

do differently the next time you are in similar situation) and apply clinical judgement.

Personal nursing experience was that as a triage nurse I my responsibility was to assess patients

and identify the type of care they required in the emergency room. I was assessing patients to

identify the order by which the patients would be treated. I did not use critical thinking when

making a decision about the order by which the patients would get treatment because some

patients required emergency medical attention more compared to others and the decision I made

had adverse outcome. It was because patients who needed emergency medical attention did not

get the treatment on time and this resulted to poor patient outcome. Next time when am in a

similar situation I would use critical thinking and critical judgement by effectively analyzing the

leve of needs of different patients and decide on a better order by which the patients would get

treatment. I would do this by prioritizing the patients who were in a much bad situation for them

to get treatment first to improve their outcome.

Summarize your thoughts regard the safe provision of patient care regarding the practice

change demonstrating growth in understanding of clinical reasoning.

Critical thinking skills are an important aspect in the nursing practice and all nurses should

ensure that they use critical reasoning during their day-to-day practice and when caring for

patients (Royce et al., 2019). Safe patient care is paramount as all nurse should ensure that they

provide safe care to their patients to improve patient outcomes. In healthcare setting, use of

critical reasoning has led to improved patient outcomes as nurses use critical thinking to offer the

patients the best and safest available care. For example, if a patient present with emergency

medical attention, nurses are able to make quick decisions by using critical reasoning and

provide safe care to the patient. When nurses use critical reasoning, they are able to reduce

diagnostic errors when caring for patients which improves their outcome because patients receive

safe care (Royce et al., 2019).

References

Hawkins, D., Elder, L., & Paul, R. (2019). The Thinker's Guide to Clinical Reasoning: Based on

Critical Thinking Concepts and Tools. Rowman & Littlefield.

Royce, C. S., Hayes, M. M., & Schwartzstein, R. M. (2019). Teaching Critical Thinking.

Academic Medicine, 94(2), 187–194. https://doi.org/10.1097/acm.0000000000002518