Critical Thinking and Decision Making: Essential Skills in Nursing

Abstract

Critical thinking and Decision-making skills are the crucial skills in the Comprehensive Patient care system where the ability of Physician and nurses is to provide high-quality, safe care depending upon their ability to think, reason, and judge critical clinical situations. Nurse Practitioners, Nurse Educators, and Nurse administrators are required for managing the dynamic health care system along with advancing excellence at every level of patient care in all levels of clinical settings by applying the skills of CT (critical thinking) along with DM (decision making). This narrative review summates the present scientific knowledge state concerning decision-making and critical thinking skills in nursing. Numerous keywords, as well as Mesh terminology, have been used to search Google Scholar and Pubmed databases. Additionally, the relevant lists of reference articles have been examined. In clinical practice, using critical thinking along with decision-making skills enhances professional action based on evidence as well as develops such areas of profession relevant to competence, according to the findings. In terms of providing safer, more competent service, the CT skills’ acquisition may help to increase diagnostic precision along with decision making, resulting in better results for patients. Nonetheless, in clinical practice, our literature review revealed that there are just a few studies investigating CT. Improved CT skills may enhance patient quality care, however, the exact relationship between CT as well as outcomes is yet unknown.