A high quality nursing care requires a well integrated knowledge, critical thinking, problem solving skills, and moreover the ability to recognize and apply these principles and concepts in the required clinical situations. Therefore the ability of students to formulate the appropriate mental models in different clinical scenarios can be used as an effective assessment tool for the students. There are two types of mental models in learning: General mental model and situational model learning (Azzarello & Wood, 2006).
General Mental Model Learning:
The general mental model learning is defined as the use of facts, theories, concepts, procedures stored in the memory from previous textbook readings or that are acquired through formal education, …show more content…
For eg: The nurse assigned to care for a patient newly admitted with sepsis and the physician order states “follow sepsis protocol”. The nurse initiates the care of the patient with the general mental model (previous experience, knowledge, and sepsis guidelines), then on further assessment the nurse identifies the patient is in renal failure and has ischemic cardiomyopathy. Therefore, the nurse caring for this patient should be cautious while administering fluid boluses and carefully should monitor central venous pressure, cardiac output, cardiac index, stroke volume variation, and all. The vasopressors are usually the next line of treatment for symptomatic hypotensive septic patients who fails to respond to fluids, but in this scenario patient has ischemic cardiomyopathy, therefore the nurse should carefully assess the need for inotropes over vasopressors depending upon the patients presenting symptoms. In this scenario we have a preset sepsis guideline, but the nurse can effectively plan the treatment monitoring closely the hemodynamic parameters (CO,SV,CI,SVV) and the patient’s
General Mental Model Learning:
The general mental model learning is defined as the use of facts, theories, concepts, procedures stored in the memory from previous textbook readings or that are acquired through formal education, …show more content…
For eg: The nurse assigned to care for a patient newly admitted with sepsis and the physician order states “follow sepsis protocol”. The nurse initiates the care of the patient with the general mental model (previous experience, knowledge, and sepsis guidelines), then on further assessment the nurse identifies the patient is in renal failure and has ischemic cardiomyopathy. Therefore, the nurse caring for this patient should be cautious while administering fluid boluses and carefully should monitor central venous pressure, cardiac output, cardiac index, stroke volume variation, and all. The vasopressors are usually the next line of treatment for symptomatic hypotensive septic patients who fails to respond to fluids, but in this scenario patient has ischemic cardiomyopathy, therefore the nurse should carefully assess the need for inotropes over vasopressors depending upon the patients presenting symptoms. In this scenario we have a preset sepsis guideline, but the nurse can effectively plan the treatment monitoring closely the hemodynamic parameters (CO,SV,CI,SVV) and the patient’s