Nursing decision making

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TABLE OF CONTENTS

CHAPTER: LITERATURE REVIEW1

Nursing decision making1

Issues relevant to understanding care delivery outcomes2

Example for decision making process4

Workflow process variables7

Summary8

REFERENCES9

CHAPTER: LITERATURE REVIEW

The literature review will discuss the decision making and the issues which arise as a result of understanding care delivery outcomes. The literature review also discusses the work flow process and how decisions are made in clinical settings. The literature review defines and discusses clinical decision-making from a cultural context, professional identity, decision theory that brings together perceptions with conceptual understandings of nursing. The linkage with professional standards and expectations is clearly articulated.

Nursing decision making

Nurses are continuously facing demands to make decisions of care in clinical settings. It becomes necessary for them to make a choice for decision making although it is considered as a complex process. The complexity of this process requires a broad knowledge and access to reliable source and information (Pretz, Victoria, 2011). The work environment should also be supportive. The decision which nurses make while providing care will affect the effectiveness of clinical practice and it impacts the experiences and life with regards to the health care provided to them in that reference. It is necessary that the nurse should have sufficient knowledge for making decisions without risking the life of the patients. The decision making of the nurses also facilitates the learning and development of decision making in nursing field.

Decision making in nursing has been discussed on the basis of intuitive-humanist model and systematic-positivist models. There are two approaches which are significant in nursing research which include information-processing theory and analytical decision making theory within the systematic-positivist stance (Olivia, 2007). Analytical decision making provides the knowledge that rational decision making precedes action. For analysis systematic step by step procedures are used that are followed until decision is made. The information processing model is a psychological theory which is used in making decisions and providing scientific approaches to decision making. There are 4 stages of decision making for nurses this includes gathering information about the patient, generating hypothesis about the problem, interpreting the hypothesis in the light if tentative hypothesis, choosing the best option for the hypothesis and choosing the best which fits to the evidence (Mary, 2010).

Issues relevant to understanding care delivery outcomes

Clinical judgments and decision-making are key attributes of professional practice, and feature highly in most models for evidence-based practice as well as in much of the guidance available on clinical leadership, quality improvement and organizational change (Jane, 2012). In short, Clinical judgment is central to the safe and effective functioning of health services. Not only is it central to safe, effective care, it is also the most difficult element of professional practice to define, and to implement in terms of how it relates to organizational needs and priorities and in how such an individualized concept can contribute, particularly in practice-based professions such as nursing and to some extent allied health which are often characterized by regulation and standardization of structures and processes (Mariann, 2011). This aims to present theory and research ...