criticalthinking&reasoning

• Critical Thinking


  The mental processes nurses use to ensure that they are doing their best thinking and decision-making
• Clinical Reasoning


  The cognitive process that uses thinking strategies to gather and analyze client information, evaluate the relevance of the information, and decide on possible nursing actions to improve the client's physiologic and psychosocial outcomes
• Significance of Developing Critical Thinking Abilities

  • Critical thinking is essential for safe, effective, and professional nursing care
  • It involves intentional higher-level thinking to define a client's problem, examine evidence-based practice, and make choices in care delivery
  • In critical thinking, a nurse critiques his or her thoughts to ascertain an appropriate outcome
• Ways nurses use critical thinking skills

  • Nurses use knowledge from other subjects and fields
  • Nurses deal with change in stressful environments
  • Nurses make important decisions
• Creativity


  • Thinking that results in the development of new ideas and products
  • Creativity in problem-solving and decision-making is the ability to develop and implement new and better solutions for healthcare outcomes
  • Required when the nurse encounters a new situation or a client situation in which traditional interventions are not effective
• Personal Critical Thinking Indicators: Behaviors, Attitudes, and Characteristics


  • Self Aware
  • Genuine
  • Effective Communicator
  • Curious and Inquisitive
  • Alert to Context
  • Reflective and self-corrective
  • Analytical and insightful
  • Logical and Intuitive
  • Confident and Resilient
  • Honest and Upright
  • Autonomous and Responsible
  • Careful and Prudent
  • Open and Fair-minded
  • Sensitive and Diversity
  • Creative
  • Realistic and practical
  • Proactive
  • Courageous
  • Patient and persistent
  • Flexible
  • Health-oriented
  • Empathetic
  • Improvement-oriented
• Attitudes that Foster Critical Thinking

  • Independence
  • Fair-Mindedness
  • Insight into Egocentricity
  • Intellectual Humility
  • Intellectual Courage to Challenge the Status Quo and Rituals
  • Integrity
  • Perseverance
  • Confidence
  • Curiosity
• Techniques of Critical Thinking

  • Critical analysis
  • Socratic questioning
  • Inductive reasoning
  • Deductive reasoning
• Applying Critical Thinking to Nursing Practice

  • Nursing Process
  • Problem Solving
  • Trial and Error
  • Intuition
  • Clinical judgment in nursing
  • Research Process
• Components of Clinical Reasoning

  • Cognitive processes
  • Metacognitive processes
• Setting Priorities


  • Nurses have to think quickly to resolve problems
  • Nursing students entering clinical need to organize the care to be provided by organizing the clinical day
  • Nursing students set priorities, are flexible, and understand the day may be subject to change
• Developing Rationales


  • When the nurse transfers nursing knowledge to the clinical situation to justify the plan of care
  • Nursing students are often asked to explain the "why" of their priority setting and subsequent interventions
• Learning How to Act

  The nurse must know how and when to respond in a clinical situation by recognizing what is most urgent or significant
• Clinical Reasoning-in-Transition


  • The ability to recognize subtle changes in a client's condition over time
  • It includes the evaluation of nursing interventions and the trending of relevant assessment data
• Responding to Changes in the Client's Condition

  • An important aspect of nursing practice and the nurse's responsibility is to detect changes in the client's condition, recognize a need to change priorities, adjust nursing care, and alert the primary care provider when appropriate
• Reflection


  • A key to the success of clinical reasoning
  • Through reflection the nurse identifies factors that improved client care and those that required changing or elimination
• Integration of Critical Thinking and Clinical Reasoning

  • Clinical reasoning requires the integration of critical thinking in the identification of the most appropriate interventions that will improve the client's condition
  • Nurses use critical thinking and clinical reasoning skills when making decisions about client care
  • Logical reasoning is a critical thinking skill that closely aligns with clinical reasoning
• Types of Concept Map

  • Hierarchical maps
  • Spider maps
  • Flowchart maps
  • Systems maps