· Describe two (2) essential skills that are necessary for the associate degree nurse of the future to provide safe patient care. Critical thinking and therapeutic relationship skills are necessary to provide safe patient care. Critical thinking is the basis for clinical judgment used by nurses in making decisions about client care and is a key part of the nursing licensure examination (Catalano, 2015, p. 78). I use critical thinking every day as an LPN, during direct patient care, patient teaching, and during patient discharge. If you think about it, we all use critical thinking every day in one setting or another. An associate degree nurse of the future must prepare for extensive critical thinking to provide safe
