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Making decisions: nursing practices in critical care

journal contribution
posted on 2001-01-01, 00:00 authored by Judy CurreyJudy Currey, Linda Worrall-Carter
This article reports the types and complexity level of decisions made in everyday clinical practice by critical care nurses. It also reports factors that influence the complexity of those decisions. A combination of methods were chosen for the two phase study. In the first phase, 12 qualified critical care nurses documented decisions (over a 2 hour period) on a clinical decision recording form designed by the researcher. In the second phase, participants attended a semi-structured focus group.

From the analysis, five types of decisions were identified; assessment, intervention, organisation, communication and education. In addition to these documented decisions, three factors that influenced decision complexity were identified from a thematic analysis of the transcribed interviews; communication, patient related and properties of the decision. Nurses reported that communication decisions were the most difficult to make. However, the concept of nurses knowing the patient reduced the level of decision complexity. It is suggested that this has important implications for decision making practices of nurses working in the area of critical care and potentially for patient outcomes.

History

Journal

Australian critical care

Volume

14

Issue

3

Pagination

127 - 131

Publisher

Australian College of Critical Care Nurses

Location

Carlton, Vic.

ISSN

1036-7314

eISSN

1878-1721

Language

eng

Publication classification

C1.1 Refereed article in a scholarly journal

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