CRITICAL THINKING IN NURSING
INTRODUCTION
The history of nursing profession has moved from providing physical care to delivering appropriate, effective, and holistic patient care. Nurses are viewed as a liaison in the health care team and respected by patients more for her knowledge and judgment skills in the present complex health care environment. Critical thinking helps nurses to diagnose, identify, intervene and apply the problem-solving strategies in clinical practice. Identifying ways to enhance and nurture critical thinking in nursing practice will transform nurses as leaders and advocates.
USAGE IN CLINICAL PRACTICE Application of critical thinking in clinical practice is of great value in all healthcare departments. Some examples
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E. Boyer identifies four main domains in the scholarship of discovery, integration, application and teaching (Conard, & Pape, 2014). Identifying peer-reviewed, research articles, assimilating the found information and synthesizing new ideas based on one’s knowledge or expertise are critical attributes for a critical reader. Integrating the acquired knowledge by proposing possible, evidence-based applications and teaching nurses to implement that effectively reflect critical thinking in practice. Nurses should identify their strengths and limitations, and rationalize their actions with the concrete knowledge to develop their competence. Nurses with honesty, self-discipline and ability to accept suggestions or criticisms develop critical thinking naturally (Walden University Writing Center, 2010).
SUMMARY
The critical thinking among nurses is known to bring out best patient outcomes. Present nurses work in fast-paced, task-directed environment due to lack of staff, high patient acuity, and fast patient turnover (Berkow, Virkstis, Stewart, Aronson & Donohue, 2011). Expecting nurses to apply critical thinking in this environment is a huge challenge for every health care facility. Providing an environment with opportunity and growth for nurses will yield both critical thinkings for nurses and nurse scholars for the