title: Clinical reasoning in experienced nurses.
abstract: As an essential component of nursing practice, clinical reasoning is used to assimilate information, analyze data, and make decisions regarding patient care. Little is known about the reasoning strategies of experienced nurses who are not yet experts. This qualitative descriptive study explored the cognitive strategies used by experienced nurses as they considered assessment findings of assigned patients. To date, few studies of nurses' clinical reasoning have been conducted in a practice setting during actual patient care. A small group research design was employed using the think-aloud (TA) method with protocol analysis. A total of 15 experienced nurses were asked to "think aloud" about patient assessment findings. Data were audiotaped, transcribed, and analyzed using the three steps of protocol analysis. The results suggest that experienced nurses used a conceptual language to reason about assessment findings and used heuristics to reason more quickly and efficiently.
authors.affiliation: College of Nursing, Department of Medical-Surgical Nursing, University of Illlinois at Chicago, USA.
authors.forename: Barbara
authors.initials: B
authors.lastname: Simmons
authors.forename: Dorothy
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Lanuza
authors.forename: Marsha
authors.initials: M
authors.lastname: Fonteyn
authors.forename: Frank
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Hicks
authors.forename: Karyn
authors.initials: K
authors.lastname: Holm
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D001291:Attitude of Health Personnel; D002983:Clinical Competence / Q000592:standards*; D003210:Concept Formation; D003625:Data Collection; D007722:Health Knowledge, Attitudes, Practice; D006764:Hospitals, Community; D006784:Hospitals, Teaching; D006801:Humans; D007600:Judgment; D019359:Knowledge; D008128:Logic; D015146:Midwestern United States; D009730:Nursing Assessment / Q000379:methods*; D015404:Nursing Methodology Research; D009741:Nursing Staff, Hospital / Q000193:education / Q000523:psychology*; D010363:Pattern Recognition, Automated; D036301:Qualitative Research; D013850:Thinking