Castledine Column: Critical Thinking Is Crucial, Essay Example

The nine AACN Essentials of Master’s Education draws out the skills and knowledge that masters’-educated nurses acquire in the program. These essentials are applicable to diverse specialties and tracks within the healthcare setting, such as a Family Nurse Practitioners or an emergency room nurse. The first essential focuses on acquiring a background for practice from the sciences and humanities, which calls for nursing students to integrate scientific principles and findings from nursing, public health, genetics, and organizational sciences, among others, for the persistent enhancement of nursing care within diverse healthcare settings. The second essential focuses on Organization and Systems leadership, which stresses how important leadership at the organization level is integral for safe and high-quality patient care because of the decision-making involved. The third essential stresses safety and quality improvement, recognizing that masters’-prepared nurses need to be able to appropriate quality principles within an organizational setting while also retaining the capacity to state methods, tools, performance measures, and standards. The fourth essential principles focuses on research, as nurses must be able to apply research findings into practice settings and act as change agents, resolve practice or systemic problems that arrive, and provide results. Essential V relates the healthcare technologies and informatics, which ensures that nurses are competent in the technologies and technology system used in healthcare settings. Communication technologies and patient-care technologies contribute to the enhancement of patient care and aids in integrating and coordinating care. Essential VI focuses on advocacy and health policy, as nurses must retain the capacity to advocate for patients through political and social policy within the community. Essential VII stresses the importance of collaboration in order to improve outcomes, advocating for masters’-prepared nurses are expected to engage with other healthcare professionals to provide the most optimal healthcare. The eighth principle focuses on clinical prevention and population health in order to enhance health. The final principle recognizes that masters’-prepared nurses can devise and implement interventions that impact healthcare outcomes at the micro and macro levels that incorporates all of the knowledge learned upon graduation.

After examining the mission statement, vision, and purpose of Chamberlain College of Nursing, it is clear that Chamberlain founders wanted to cultivate the essential skill sets in each and every student who attended the school. The school’s vision to have graduate exceptional nurses who are armed with the skills set and knowledge to transform the healthcare industry through nursing interventions. In addition, Chamberlain’s mission to give nursing students a great nursing education that is set apart from other nursing programs in its academic excellence, integrity, innovation, and unparalleled services. As such, Chamberlain’s articulated purpose is to adequately prepare nurses who will optimize healthcare outcomes in a variety of settings. While the Essentials focus on the nurse’s role within the community as a patient advocate who has the power to enact change at the community level, as well as inter-professionally via collaboration, Chamberlain seeks to cultivate necessary skills for nurses as individuals in order to optimize health outcomes.

Becoming a professional nurse requires an individual to adequately cultivate critical thinking skills in order to think like a nurse.  Nurses have to deal with certain problems and view their clients in a certain because of how they engage the patient and provide patient care. Nurses must learn the basic concepts, ideas, and theories within nursing discourses and epistemologies in order to develop their skills and intellectual abilities, becoming more disciplined and autonomous critical thinkers. Indeed, critical thinking refers to a disciplined intellectual process that calls for the application of dexterous reasoning that governs both action and belief. Clinical decision-making requires nurses to have critical thinking skills  as they must be able to think in a logical and systematic manner, maintaining an open mind and allowing room for reflection and questioning to ensure quality care and safe nursing practices. Nurse practitioners who value critical thinking and adhere to proscribed intellectual standards strive to be logical, accurate, clear and precise so that they can adequately address their intended purpose.

References

AACN Essentials of Master’s Education in Nursing: The link to the PDF version is on the AACN website at http://www.aacn.nche.edu/education-resources/essential-series
Castledine, G. (2010). Castledine column. Critical thinking is crucial. British Journal of Nursing, 19(4), 271.

Chamberlain (CCN) Mission, Philosophy, MSN Program Outcomes (Graduate Catalog)