Responding to uncertainty in nursing practice.
Uncertainty is a fact of life for practising clinicians and cannot be avoided. This paper outlines the model of uncertainty presented by Katz (1988, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK. pp. 544-565) and examines the descriptive and normative power of three broad theoretical and strategic approaches to dealing with uncertainty: rationality, bounded rationality and intuition. It concludes that nursing research and development (R&D) must acknowledge uncertainty more fully in its R&D agenda and that good-quality evaluation studies which directly compare intuitive with rational-analytical approaches for given clinical problems should be a dominant feature of future R&D.
Thompson
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Department of Health Studies, Centre for Evidence Based Nursing, Genesis 6, University of York, York, YO10 5DQ, UK.
Dowding
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D000223:Adaptation, Psychological; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards; D003657:Decision Making; D003661:Decision Support Techniques; D019317:Evidence-Based Medicine; D006801:Humans; D007389:Internal-External Control; D019545:Intuition; D007600:Judgment; D019359:Knowledge; D008128:Logic; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000379:methods / Q000592:standards*; D009732:Nursing Care / Q000523:psychology / Q000592:standards*; D015399:Nursing Research; D009742:Nursing Theory; D011336:Probability