Using Critical Thinking in Clinical Practice

In nursing practice, critical thinking plays a crucial role of providing a nurse with the necessary skills for prioritizing and making key decision that would save lives. There is a high degree of sensitivity in clinical practice, which means that a simple error could result in serious repercussions like loss of life for the patient (Victor-Chmil, 2013). Therefore, it is vital that a nurse has the requisite critical thinking skills. Nurses are responsible for the well-being of the patients and they should make use of all the skills they have attained in order to offer the patient the best care. The role of a nurse requires that they have the relevant framework for critical thinking. For example, making use of critical thinking, a nurse can develop sufficient procedure for allocating the available resources. This would assist in determining the relevant tasks required for specific situations and have the required resources available for these tasks.
Nurses can also use critical thinking to solve the numerous ethical dilemmas that they are faced with each day. For example, there are some pain-relieving medications that could have serious side effects on a patient and the nurse would need to employ critical thinking in order to determine if prescribing the medication to the patient is worth the risk. This demonstrates that critical thinking assists the nurse in making the right decision. Critical thinking skill assists the nurse to evaluate the effects of an action before they perform the action. There are some nursing actions that have the potential to cause harm to a patient and others would be beneficial to the patient. Without having the necessary critical thinking skills, the nurse would not be able to determine the effects of an action.
Improving Clinical Competence by Employing Critical Thinking
Critical thinking has the ability to create an essential framework that can be used to improve nursing practice. Nursing practitioners are required to deliver the highest standards of healthcare at all times to patients. This means that a nurse must be competent when he/she is offering healthcare services. Without sufficient critical thinking skills, a nurse would find it hard to maintain high standards of patient care. With critical thinking, a nursing practitioner attains a better understanding of various situations that they might be faced with in the performance of his/her tasks (Martyn, Terwijn, Kek, & Huijser, 2014). Therefore, critical thinking facilitates for the nurse to employ systematic reasoning for them to attain the desired results.
An excellent framework for competence is formed because critical thinking assists the nurse in evaluating potential alternatives, which would avert hasty decisions. This means that the nurse would critically examine all available alternatives in order for them to determine the best outcome for the patient. A nurse who makes use of critical thinking is more likely to consult other professionals. For example, the input from other professionals could determine the ultimate difference in saving the life of a patient. Critical thinking assists a nurse to employ evidence-based practice principles in their nursing field enabling them to make rational decisions.
Connections Between Critical Thinking, Scholarship, and Practice
There are numerous connections that exist between critical thinking, scholarship, and clinical practice. It is well understood that critical thinking forms the foundation for nursing studies. It is not possible for an individual pursuing nursing studies to succeed if they do not have sufficient critical thinking skills. Upcoming nurses are required to demonstrate their ability to analyze different scenarios by using critical thinking. On the other hand, it is not possible for an upcoming nursing practitioner to excel in the nursing practice if they do not have a good academic background. In the course of the study program, nurses are provided with the requisite theoretical and practical skills necessary for them to excel in the nursing field. Therefore, success in scholarship results into a successful nursing practice. Having a poor academic background would result in the lowering of the quality of nursing practice, and this means that quality of care would also be negatively impacted.


References
Martyn, J., Terwijn, R., Kek, M. Y., & Huijser, H. (2014). Exploring the relationships between teaching, approaches to learning and critical thinking in a problem-based learning foundation nursing course. Nurse education today, 34(5), 829-835.
Victor-Chmil, J. (2013). Critical thinking versus clinical reasoning versus clinical judgment: Differential diagnosis. Nurse educator, 38(1), 34-36.