CLINICAL DECISION MAKING

Clinical Decision Making

Clinical Decision Making

Introduction

Effective decision making is fundamental for the sustainable future of professional nursing practice. Nursing staff needs to have the pre-requisite skills and knowledge to ensure the safety and speedy recovery of their patients. There are two primary sources through which clinical staff can acquire this knowledge and skill. The first involves the institution of education to ensure that nurses have the specific skills and expertise needed to provide care for the patients. However, these skills can also be learnt through extensive experience in nursing. During the phase in the decision making which involves deliberation, nurses greatly benefit from the depth and variety of their knowledge on the subject of patient care. Nurses are perhaps the only member of the NHS that have complete access to the patients on 24/7 basis. Therefore, they have the maximum opportunity to interact with the patients and apply what they have learned to help the patient recover.

Moreover, nurses are in the best position to observe the symptoms of the patient over the period and decide if the patient might be developing some serious illness. This allows the doctors to determine the most appropriate method of treatment for the patient based on the feedback of the nurses. The huge responsibility that is put on the shoulders of nurses along with a need to have good understanding of various technologies available in the hospitals, require nurses to be effective at decision making. One of the key components of a qualified nurse is the ability to identify important information and process it to make efficient and correct decisions.

There are various factors that play an important role in determining the quality of the decision made by the nurses. These involve the frequency with which the nurse has to make the decision, the complexity of the decision and the external factors that can influence the quality of the decision. This paper discusses the importance of decision making for nurses in the healthcare industry.

Discussion

Background

Providing explicit, thoughtful and conscientious consideration on the basis of the evidence that is collected on continuous basis forms the basis of patient's health care decisions. There are many systems that are put in place in the hospitals to rank the evidence in accordance to its importance. But these systems suffer from major inefficiencies due to a lack of integration with the human based intervention. This information is collected through the scientific observation of the patient's symptoms and condition. This evidence could be collected through administering trials and meta-analysis of the patients suffering from illness. Similarly conducting quasi experimental and non-experimental research utilizing various observation techniques along with input and insights from the leading professional in the domain can help to collect the evidence to correctly diagnose the patient (Elstein 2002, p729-732).

The integration of information from experts in the clinical practice, observation of the patient allows the professionals to make informed decisions regarding the treatment of the patient. The factors affecting the decision of nurses include the evidence collected through ...