Clinical Judgement

Application of information based on the real observation of the patient with the combination of subjective and objective data that lead to conclusion making is regarded as clinical judgement. Its developed through practicing, experience, knowledge and continuous critical analysis.(Kienle & Kiene, 2011). It continuously expand to all medical fields: diagnosis, therapy, communication, and decision making. Clinical judgement is of complex because nurses are needed to have prior training in that he/she can have a better understanding of the subject. This relies on the ability of the nurse to make observation, identify information which is relevant and good reasoning. The process entails a cycle of sensory activities which are starting with perception

It’s tempting to make an assumption that teaching doctors and nursing students to be decision maker will help improve the quality of judgement and decision making. A recent review on education interventions to improve clinical judgement and decision making in nurses found little evidence that existing strategies might be effective( Thompson ,2011). Out of the twenty four controlled comparisons in the review , only seven showed a positive effect and this effects were variable and very few had a clinical significant. We should not be surprised by; more training does not always cause a better performance and the causal relations that educationalists are trying to tap into are so complex. ( Campbell et al., 2000). Educational strategy can be more effective if appropriate theory is incorporated. The review of Thompson 2011 incorporated educational theory and a few incorporated decision

The nurses like all other humans make use of cognitive shortcuts to manage complex situations however this shortcuts do generate predictable and well known biases. Human beings do depend on information that is so easy to recall regardless of its appropriateness. We reconstruct information in response to stimuli in the environment.

Intuition is a useful tool which requires to be recognized in nursing. Intuitive perception in nursing is the ability to experience the element of clinical situation as a whole in order to solve a problem or reach a decision with limited concrete information. In the practice of clinical nursing, attending to salient information, understanding and responding to a patients issues often takes place without any conscious deliberation at all. The nurse has the ability to immediately perceive a situation and respond independently to a linear reasoning process. Intuition has been described as a 6th sense (Burnard,