Comprehensive understanding of key concepts and issues in short articles

Critical Thinking & Generational Teams

Critical Thinking

In the course of caring for patients, nurses deal with life threatening situations every day. This constitutes the necessity to develop critical thinking skills in order to know what to do, when to do it, and how it needs to be done to ensure safety and sensibility in patient care. Critical thinking skills develop over time with experience, developing deeper knowledge, and developing higher levels of judgment in the course of care (Alfaro-LeFevre, Apr 2000).

Critical thinking skills involve checking accuracy and reliability of information, recognizing inconsistencies, and identifying patterns of missing information. In the course of busy times, natural tendencies cause people to react without thinking. These patterns are dangerous in patient care. It is important to realize that critical thinking takes time to develop and implement. It requires knowledge, skills, practice, caution, and judgment and is best away from the patient in a quiet place. The need for time to think must be valued.

Creativity requires judgment in how to use creativity safely and in a sensible manner. It requires both producing ideas and evaluating and judging their worth. Critical thinking is based on evidence to value the recognition of gut feelings. Intuition should be followed with looking for evidence that validates it.

Effective techniques involve monitoring and considering 'what if' scenarios. Critical thinking must explain how a nurse knows what they know. Critical thinking skills come about by matching situations with previous situations. It also comes about by getting to know the patient and their current and history of problems.

Generational Teams

"Healthcare practitioners of all disciplines and ages bring expertise that arises from their experience as a generation" (Halfer, 2013). Each generation develops attitudes and personalities that are shaped by events in common history. And, each person in a generation experiences the events differently that creates unique experiences of the individuals. Commonalities of generations cut across racial and ethical lines where each generation views the world differently. Collective life experiences shape what generations value, what they expect, and how information is filtered and processed.

Where baby boomers value teamwork, Gen X values self-reliance and independence. Gen X prefers to work alone. Veterans and baby boomers have years of knowledge where Gen X believes in getting to root of the problem. Gen X, Y, and Z. crave a work/life balance. Gen Y and Z. approaches tasks with an entrepreneurial spirit, they believe in having fun at work, where Gen X separates work and fun, believing that there is a time for work and a time for fun.