New nurses are faced with making many decisions in meeting the needs of their patients. Nursing clinical judgment relates to the life experiences of the practicing nurse and is the end decision made when providing safe patient care (Tanner, 2006). Recognizing patient cues, analyzing those cues, then developing a hypothesis, generating ideas, taking action and finally evaluating the outcome leads to clinical decision making in patient care (Dickison, Haerling, & Lasater, 2019). Evidence-based Practice (EBP) is consideration of clinical problems or questions while using clinical judgment and patient preferences. Integration of EBP happens when students search for evidence to support interventions as part of the rationales for patient care.
Assignment:
The student will write a critically appraised summary of the selected evidence-based nursing article using American Psychological Association (APA) format, professional writing skills and language, while relating the information to the clinical incident in a succinct and clear manner.
The critical reasoning and reflective thinking for the assignment involves three questions:
Form a hypothesis. Think about a patient care incident that has occurred in the adult medical-surgical clinical setting: a situation, event, encounter or experience, which has elicited a feeling, emotion, relief, surprise, understanding or confirmation and describe it within the essential context of the incident. This is something that you experience as a student while in the 195 or 205 Adult Med/Surg clinical patient care setting. Use your clinical instructor as a resource.
Refine the hypothesis. Why was this incident significant? Describe why this incident was significant enough to affect you or influenced your nursing care or practice.
Describe specific lessons learned from this incident and what would the student do differently if the incident repeated itself. This section requires the student to search for a nursing article (peer reviewed) that addresses the lesson learned or supports an alternative intervention or approach to the incident.
