Critical Thinker

Learning to Think Like a Nurse Nurses are constantly exposed to many patients with different presentations of signs and symptoms. Some similar and others varying from those typical to a certain diagnosis. It is very easy to jump the gun and assume that a patient has a certain diagnosis due to their subjective and objective presentation along with lab results. The Quality in Australian Healthcare Study found that, “cognitive failure was a factor in fifty-seven percent of adverse clinical events” (Wilson et al, 1995). This proves the importance of having a critical thinking course in a nursing curriculum. In order for a nurse to be a critical thinker, one needs to be free of bias’, assumptions, tunnel vision, absolutism, and personal beliefs when caring for a patient. It is important to look outside the box, and further down the line when it comes to making a decision for one’s patient. The nurse needs to be able to identify if a certain medication or intervention is pertinent to their patient and if it will be beneficial or leave them worse off than they were before. Throughout this article, there is descriptive situations that nurses face everyday. Even though an expert nurse has an experienced, solid foundation, it is important to not let …show more content…
Also, it is important not to, “use the information merely to confirm what you think is happening but to again gain a more accurate picture of the patient’s situation” (Levett-Jones, T., Sundin, D., Bagnall, M., Hague, K., Schumann, W., Taylor, C., & Wink, J., 2013). I like to think of it as treating each patient’s case as a unique, individual puzzle, where the nurse needs all of the necessary pieces (health history, assessment, labs, evidence based facts) to put it together properly, with a beautiful