Critical Thinking and Clinical Decision Making in Nurse

Abstract

BACKGROUND: Today, nurses are exposed to everchanging complicated conditions in health care services, they provide.
To be able to cope with these conditions effectively, they should be competent decision makers. Besides, as decision
making conditions get more complicated, using critical thinking is a need. The current study was carried out to evaluate
the relationship between critical thinking and clinical decision making, in nurses of critical and general care units of
hospitals in Isfahan. In addition, it is also aimed to compare the nurses of critical and general units in critical thinking
and clinical decision making.
METHODS: This is a correlation, descriptive study of cross-sectional type. The participants are 140 nurses; 70 working
in critical care unit and 70, working in general units. Sampling method was random stratified sampling and the data was
collected using a questionnaire with three sections; containing items on demographic data, clinical decision making and
California critical thinking skills test. The validity and reliability of the questionnaire was approved using content validity,
test-retest method and internal correlation test. The data was analyzed using variance analysis, Pearson correlation
and t-test.
RESULTS: The mean score of critical thinking and clinical decision making was 10.61, 63.27 and 10.67, 61.66 for nurses
of critical care and general units, respectively. No statistical significant difference between two groups was observed in
the area of clinical decision making and critical thinking. In addition, no statistical correlation was observed between
the clinical decision making and critical thinking.
CONCLUSIONS: The findings of the study demonstrated that the mean score of critical thinking was low in nurses.
Probably, it originates from the educational system shortages and also, the professional environment problems. Some
experts believe that the reason for lack of correlation between critical thinking and clinical decision making goes back
to the absence of appropriate tool to measure the correlation.
KEY WORDS: Critical thinking, clinical decision making, nurse