Abstract

This qualitative descriptive study was designed to explore the cognitive strategies used by experienced nurses as they think about assessment findings on their assigned patients. As an essential component of nursing practice, clinical reasoning is used to assimilate information, analyze data, and make decisions regarding patient care. Changes in health care settings and patient acuity challenge nurses to make complex decisions under conditions of uncertainty and risk. With fewer expert nurses available to act as mentors, experienced nurses who are not yet experts must utilize varied reasoning strategies to care for acutely ill patients. Few studies of nurses' clinical reasoning have been conducted in a practice setting during actual patient care. Information processing theory provided the theoretical framework for the study.

Description

This dissertation has also been disseminated through the ProQuest Dissertations and Theses database. Dissertation/thesis number: 3039305; ProQuest document ID: 251667215. The author still retains copyright.

Author Details

Barbara Simmons, PhD, Adjunct Faculty - Benedictine University

Sigma Membership

Lambda Upsilon at-Large

Type

Dissertation

Format Type

Text-based Document

Study Design/Type

Descriptive/Correlational

Research Approach

Qualitative Research

Keywords:

Decision-Making, Problem-Solving, Clinical Reasoning

Advisor

Dorothy Lanuza

Second Advisor

Frank Hicks

Degree

PhD

Degree Grantor

Loyola University Chicago

Degree Year

2002

Rights Holder

All rights reserved by the author(s) and/or publisher(s) listed in this item record unless relinquished in whole or part by a rights notation or a Creative Commons License present in this item record.

All permission requests should be directed accordingly and not to the Sigma Repository.

All submitting authors or publishers have affirmed that when using material in their work where they do not own copyright, they have obtained permission of the copyright holder prior to submission and the rights holder has been acknowledged as necessary.

Review Type

None: Degree-based Submission

Acquisition

Proxy-submission

Date of Issue

2023-02-27

Full Text of Presentation

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